The South China Sea Thermohaline Structure And Circulation

Download or read book The South China Sea Thermohaline Structure and Circulation written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, the authors used the Navy's Master Oceanographic Observation Data Set (MOODS), consisting of 116,019 temperature and 9,617 salinity profiles, during 1968-1984 to investigate the temporal and spatial variabilities of South China Sea thermohaline structures and circulation. For temperature, profiles were binned into 204 monthly data sets from 1968 to 1984 (17 years). For salinity, profiles were binned into 12 climatological monthly data sets due to the data paucity. A two-scale optimal interpolation method was used to establish a three-dimensional, monthly varying gridded data set from MOODS, covering the area of 5 degrees to 25 degrees N and 105 degrees to 125 degrees E and the depth from the surface to 400 m. After the gridded data set had been established, both composite analysis and Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis (for temperature only) were used to identify the major thermohaline features, including annual mean, monthly anomalies, and interannual thermal variabilities. The inverted monthly circulation pattern using the P-vector method also is discussed.