An Overview of Internal Solitary Waves in the South China Sea

Internal solitary waves (ISWs) are the nonlinear large amplitude waves existing in the oceanic pycnocline. They are very active in the northern South China Sea (SCS). With more and more remote sensing data, in situ observational data and the development of the numerical simulation technology, a number of studies on the characteristics, the source site, the generation, and evolution of the ISWs in the SCS are reported. In this paper, earlier studies on the ISWs in the SCS are summarized and some problems worthy of study are put forward.