Kuroshio intrusion into the South China Sea with an anticyclonic eddy: evidence from underwater glider observation -- Journal of Oceanology and Limnology,2019,37(5):1469-1480

	Cite this paper:
	LIU Zenghong, CHEN Xingrong, YU Jiancheng, XU Dongfeng, SUN Chaohui. Kuroshio intrusion into the South China Sea with an anticyclonic eddy: evidence from underwater glider observation[J]. Journal of Oceanology and Limnology, 2019, 37(5): 1469-1480

Kuroshio intrusion into the South China Sea with an anticyclonic eddy: evidence from underwater glider observation

LIU Zenghong¹, CHEN Xingrong², YU Jiancheng³, XU Dongfeng¹, SUN Chaohui¹

1 State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China;
2 National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing 100081, China;
3 State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China

Abstract:

In this study, high-resolution temperature and salinity data obtained from three Sea-Wing underwater gliders were used together with satellite altimeter data to track the vertical thermohaline structure of an anticyclonic eddy that originated from the loop current of the Kuroshio southwest of Taiwan, China. One of the gliders crossed the entire eddy and it observed a remarkable warm anomaly of as much as 3.9℃ extending to 500 dbar from the base of the mixed layer. Conversely, a positive salinity anomaly was found to be above 200 dbar only in the anticyclonic eddy, with a maximum value of >0.5 in the mixed layer. Below the mixed layer, water of higher salinity (>34.7) was found, which could have been preserved through constrained vertical mixing within the anticyclonic eddy. The salinity in the upper layer of the anticyclonic eddy was much similar to that of the northwestern Pacific Ocean than the northern South China Sea, reflecting Kuroshio intrusion with anticyclonic eddy shedding from the loop current.

Key words: anticyclonic eddy|South China Sea|Kuroshio|Sea-Wing underwater glider

Received: 2018-10-13 Revised: 2018-11-30

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Articles by CHEN Xingrong

Articles by YU Jiancheng

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Articles by SUN Chaohui

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