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Seasonal characteristics and formation mechanism of the thermohaline structure of mesoscale eddy in the South China Sea

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Abstract

The seasonal characteristics and formation mechanism of the thermohaline structure of mesoscale eddy in the South China Sea are investigated using the latest eddy dataset and ARMOR3D data. Eddy-centric composites reveal that the horizontal distribution of temperature anomaly associated with eddy in winter is more of a dipole pattern in upper 50 m and tends to be centrosymmetric below 50 m, while in summer the distribution pattern is centrosymmetric in the entire water column. The horizontal distribution of eddy-induced salinity anomaly exhibits similar seasonal characteristics, except that the asymmetry of the salinity anomaly is weaker. The vertical distribution of temperature anomaly associated with eddy shows a monolayer structure, while the salinity anomaly demonstrates a triple-layer structure. Further analysis indicates that the vertical distribution of the anomalies is related to the vertical structure of background temperature and salinity fields, and the asymmetry of the anomalies in upper 50 m is mainly caused by the horizontal advection of background temperature and salinity.

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Acknowledgements

The Mesoscale Eddy Trajectory Atlas Product is provided by AVISO+ (http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/), and Yongcan Zu is also grateful to Dudley B. Chelton for his helpful comments on the dataset. The Global ARMOR3D L4 Reprocessed dataset is provided by Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (http://marine.copernicus.eu/).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Yongcan Zu & Wei Zhao

  2. Center for Ocean and Climate Research, First Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Qingdao, 266061, China

    Yongcan Zu, Shuangwen Sun, Baochao Liu & Yue Fang

  3. Laboratory for Regional Oceanography and Numerical Modeling, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao, 266237, China

    Shuangwen Sun & Yue Fang

  4. Ocean College, Zhejiang University, Zhoushan, 316021, China

    Peiliang Li

  5. Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 50603, Malaysia

    Azizan Abu Samah

Authors
  1. Yongcan Zu
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  2. Shuangwen Sun
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  3. Wei Zhao
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  4. Peiliang Li
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  5. Baochao Liu
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  6. Yue Fang
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  7. Azizan Abu Samah
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shuangwen Sun.

Additional information

Foundation item: The National Key R&D Program of China under contract No. 2017YFC1405100; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 41576028, 41306032 and 41876030; the NSFC-Shandong Joint Fund for Marine Science Research Centers under contract No. U1606405; the research fund from FIO-UM Joint Center of Marine Science and Technology.

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Zu, Y., Sun, S., Zhao, W. et al. Seasonal characteristics and formation mechanism of the thermohaline structure of mesoscale eddy in the South China Sea. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 38, 29–38 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-018-1222-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-018-1222-4

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