A study of response of thermocline in the South China Sea to ENSO events -- Journal of Oceanology and Limnology,2018,36(4):1166-1177

	Cite this paper:
	PENG Hanbang, PAN Aijun, ZHENG Quan'an, HU Jianyu. A study of response of thermocline in the South China Sea to ENSO events[J]. Journal of Oceanology and Limnology, 2018, 36(4): 1166-1177

A study of response of thermocline in the South China Sea to ENSO events

PENG Hanbang^1,2, PAN Aijun², ZHENG Quan'an³, HU Jianyu¹

1 State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361102, China;
2 Ocean Dynamics Laboratory, The Third Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration(SOA), Xiamen 361005, China;
3 Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park 20742, USA

Abstract:

This paper investigates the response of the thermocline depth (TD) in the South China Sea (SCS) to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events using 51-year (from 1960 to 2010) monthly seawater temperature and surface wind stress data acquired from the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA), together with heat flux data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), precipitation data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and evaporation data from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). It is indicated that the response of the SCS TD to the El Niño or La Niña events is in opposite phase. On one hand, the spatial-averaged TDs in the SCS (deeper than 200 m) appear as negative and positive anomalies during the mature phase of the El Niño and La Niña events, respectively. On the other hand, from June of the El Niño year to the subsequent April, the spatial patterns of TD in the north and south of 12°N appear as negative and positive anomalies, respectively, but present positive and negative anomalies for the La Niña case. However, positive and negative TD anomalies occur almost in the entire SCS in May of the subsequent year of the El Niño and La Niña events, respectively. It is suggested that the response of the TD in the SCS to the ENSO events is mainly caused by the sea surface buoyancy flux and the wind stress curl.

Key words: South China Sea (SCS)|thermocline depth|El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)|buoyancy flux|wind stress curl

Received: 2017-01-14 Revised:

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