• Login
    About WHOAS
    View Item 
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    • View Item
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of WHOASCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywordsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywords

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Observed wintertime tidal and subtidal currents over the continental shelf in the northern South China Sea

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    jgrc20832.pdf (5.435Mb)
    Date
    2014-08-19
    Author
    Li, Ruixiang  Concept link
    Chen, Changsheng  Concept link
    Xia, Huayong  Concept link
    Beardsley, Robert C.  Concept link
    Shi, Maochong  Concept link
    Lai, Zhigang  Concept link
    Lin, Huichan  Concept link
    Feng, Yanqing  Concept link
    Liu, Changjian  Concept link
    Xu, Qichun  Concept link
    Ding, Yang  Concept link
    Zhang, Yu  Concept link
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/6937
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JC009931
    DOI
    10.1002/2014JC009931
    Keyword
     Mooring; Circulation; Eddy 
    Abstract
    Synthesis analyses were performed to examine characteristics of tidal and subtidal currents at eight mooring sites deployed over the northern South China Sea (NSCS) continental shelf in the 2006–2007 and 2009–2010 winters. Rotary spectra and harmonic analysis results showed that observed tidal currents in the NSCS were dominated by baroclinic diurnal tides with phases varying both vertically and horizontally. This feature was supported by the CC-FVCOM results, which demonstrated that the diurnal tidal flow over this shelf was characterized by baroclinic Kelvin waves with vertical phase differences varying in different flow zones. The northeasterly wind-induced southwestward flow prevailed over the NSCS shelf during winter, with episodic appearances of mesoscale eddies and a bottom-intensified buoyancy-driven slope water intrusion. The moored current records captured a warm-core anticyclonic eddy, which originated from the southwestern coast of Taiwan and propagated southwestward along the slope consistent with a combination of β-plane and topographic Rossby waves. The eddy was surface-intensified with a swirl speed of >50 cm/s and a vertical scale of ∼400 m. In absence of eddies and onshore deep slope water intrusion, the observed southwestward flow was highly coherent with the northeasterly wind stress. Observations did not support the existence of the permanent wintertime South China Sea Warm Current (SCSWC). The definition of SCSWC, which was based mainly on thermal wind calculations with assumed level of no motion at the bottom, needs to be interpreted with caution since the observed circulation over the NSCS shelf in winter included both barotropic and baroclinic components.
    Description
    Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 119 (2014): 5289–5310, doi:10.1002/2014JC009931.
    Collections
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    Suggested Citation
    Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 119 (2014): 5289–5310
     
    All Items in WHOAS are protected by original copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. WHOAS also supports the use of the Creative Commons licenses for original content.
    A service of the MBLWHOI Library | About WHOAS
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | Privacy Policy
    Core Trust Logo