Abstract
Long-term change of sea surface temperature (SST) in the China Seas from 1900 to 2006 is examined based on two different observation datasets (HadISST1 and HadSST3). Similar to the Atlantic, SST in the China Seas has been well observed during the past 107 years. A comparison between the reconstructed (HadISST1) and un-interpolated (HadSST3) datasets shows that the SST warming trends from both datasets are consistent with each other in most of the China Seas. The warming trends are stronger in winter than in summer, with a maximum rate of SST increase exceeding 2.7° (100 year)−1 in the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait during winter based on HadISST1. However, the SST from both datasets experienced a sudden decrease after 1999 in the China Seas. The estimated trend from HadISST1 is stronger than that from HadSST3 in the East China Sea and the east of Taiwan Island, where the difference in the linear SST warming trends are as large as about 1° (100 year)−1 when using respectively HadISST1 and HadSST3 datasets. When compared to the linear winter warming trend of the land surface air temperature (1.6° (100 year)−1), HadSST3 shows a more reasonable trend of less than 2.1° (100 year)−1 than HadISST1’s trend of larger than 2.7° (100 year)−1 at the mouth of the Yangtze River. The results also indicate large uncertainties in the estimate of SST warming patterns.
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Liu, Q., Zhang, Q. Analysis on long-term change of sea surface temperature in the China Seas. J. Ocean Univ. China 12, 295–300 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-013-2172-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-013-2172-2