Abstract
A general pattern for turbulent mixing in the upper layer of the South China Sea (SCS) is presented based on TurboMAP measurements in April and May 2010. The turbulence level decreased significantly overall from north to south, and weakened from east to west in the northern SCS. The average dissipation rate north of 18°N reaches 1.69 × 10−8 W/kg, approximately six times larger than that south of 18°N. The mean mixing efficiency in the SCS is 0.2, with a maximum of 0.31 near the Luzon Strait. At one repeatedly occupied station located in the central deep basin, the dissipation rate varies diurnally in the mixed layer and pycnocline due to diurnal heating and cooling by solar radiation and local barotropic tide, respectively.
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Acknowledgments
This study was jointly supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2013CB956202), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA11010101), and the NSFC-Shandong Joint Fund for Marine Science Research Centers (Grant No. U1406401). The merged SLA dataset was obtained from AVISO, France; the ETOPO1 data were from NOAA; and the tide data were from Global Inverse Tide Model TPXO.
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Sun, H., Wang, Q. Microstructure observations in the upper layer of the South China Sea. J Oceanogr 72, 777–786 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-016-0371-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-016-0371-3