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Modelling the upwelling offthe east Hainan Island coast in summer 2010

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Abstract

A synoptic-scale upwelling event that developed offthe east coast of the Hainan Island (EHIU) in the summer of 2010 is defined well via processing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sea surface temperature (SST) data. The Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) with high spatial resolution has been used to investigate this upwelling event. By comparing the ROMS results against tide station data, Argo float profiles and MODIS SST, it is confirmed that the ROMS reproduces the EHIU well. The cooler-water core (CWC) distinguished by waters < 27.5°C in the EHIU, which occurred in the east Qiongzhou Strait mouth area and was bounded by a high temperature gradient, was the focus of this paper. Vertical structure of the CWC suggests that interaction between the westward flow and the bathymetry slope played a significant role in the formation of CWC. Numerical experiments indicated that the westward flow in the Qiongzhou Strait was the result of tidal rectification over variable topography (Shi et al., 2002), thus tides played a critical role on the development of the CWC. The negative wind stress curl that dominated the east Qiongzhou Strait mouth area suppressed the intensity of the CWC by 0.2–0.4°C. Further, nonlinear interaction between tidal currents and wind stress enhanced vertical mixing greatly, which would benefit the development of the CWC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Peng Bai  (白鹏), Peiliang Li  (李培良) & Kejian Wu  (吴克俭)

  2. College of Information Science and Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Yanzhen Gu  (顾艳镇)

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  1. Peng Bai  (白鹏)
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  2. Yanzhen Gu  (顾艳镇)
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  3. Peiliang Li  (李培良)
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  4. Kejian Wu  (吴克俭)
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Correspondence to Yanzhen Gu  (顾艳镇).

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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41476002), the Shandong Province Natural Science Foundation (No. ZR2014DQ013), and the State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. LTO1409)

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Bai, P., Gu, Y., Li, P. et al. Modelling the upwelling offthe east Hainan Island coast in summer 2010. Chin. J. Ocean. Limnol. 34, 1358–1373 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-016-5147-5

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