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Characteristics and mechanisms of the upwelling in the southern Taiwan Strait: a three-dimensional numerical model study

  • Special Section: Original Article
  • Regional Environmental Oceanography in the South China Sea and Its Adjacent Areas (REO-SCS): II
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Abstract

Using a nested circulation model based on the Princeton Ocean Model, we investigate the characteristics and mechanisms of two main upwellings in the southern Taiwan Strait: the Southwest upwelling and the Taiwan Bank upwelling. The Southwest upwelling exists in summer when the southwesterly monsoon dominates, and the Taiwan Bank upwelling occurs over a longer period from May to September. The upslope current over a distinctly widened shelf transports the cold water on-shoreward at the lower layer and the southwesterly monsoon wind drives the cold water to the surface layer, forming the Southwest upwelling, while tidal residual current weakens the upslope advection. For the Taiwan Bank upwelling, the upward transport of the South China Sea water due to the Bank topography carries the cold water from the subsurface layer to the depth of approximately 25 m near the Taiwan Bank, then the strong tidal mixing forces this upwelled water further upward to the surface layer.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Grants 41076001 and 40810069004 from the Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant 2010121029 from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Grant from the Programme of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (B07034), and Grant 2009CB421200 and 2010CB428904 from the National Basic Research Program of China. We thank the guest editor and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, Fujian, 361005, China

    Yuwu Jiang, Zhenwen Wan & Huasheng Hong

  2. School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono, ME, 04469, USA

    Fei Chai

  3. Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Xin Zhang

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  1. Yuwu Jiang
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  2. Fei Chai
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  3. Zhenwen Wan
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  4. Xin Zhang
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  5. Huasheng Hong
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Correspondence to Yuwu Jiang.

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Jiang, Y., Chai, F., Wan, Z. et al. Characteristics and mechanisms of the upwelling in the southern Taiwan Strait: a three-dimensional numerical model study. J Oceanogr 67, 699–708 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-011-0080-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-011-0080-x

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