Statistical analysis of surface hydrography and circulation variations in northern South China Sea

1 INTRODUCTIONThe South China Sea (SCS) is a semi-enclosedmarginal sea in western North Pacific Ocean withvery complex topography and is the important pas-sage connecting the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Ithas great impact to the global climate and a greatinterest of many oceanography researchers. Twodominant surface hydrographic and circulation fea-tures in the northern SCS are a strong fresh waterexpansion and a warm and high-salinity seawaterintrusion such as the SCS Diluted Water…     

Seasonal and intraseasonal variations of the surface Taiwan Warm Current

To study seasonal and intraseasonal variations of the Taiwan Warm Current (TWC) in detail Rotated Empirical Orthogonal Function (REOF) and Extended Associate Pattern Analysis (EAPA) are jointly adopted with daily sea surface salinity (SSS), sea surface temperature (SST) and sea surface height (SSH) datasets covering 1126 days from American Navy Experimental Real-Time East Asian Seas Ocean Nowcast System in the present paper. Results show that the first and second REOFs of SST in the southern East China Sea (SECS) account for 50.8% and 39.8% of the total variance. The surface TWC contains persistent (multi-year mean), seasonal and intraseasonal components. The persistent one mainly inosculates with the Kuroshio but the seasonal and intraseasonal ones are usually active only on the continental shelf. Its persistent component is produced by inertial flow of the Kuroshio, however its seasonal and intraseasonal ones seems coming from seasonal and intraseasonal oscillations of monsoon force. The seasonal one reaches its maximum in late summer,lasting about four months and the intraseasonal one takes place at any seasons, lasting more than 40 days.