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Upper ocean near-inertial response to the passage of two sequential typhoons in the northwestern South China Sea

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Abstract

Fifty-seven days of moored current records are examined, focusing on the sequential passage of Typhoons Nesat and Nalgae separated by 5 days in the northwestern South China Sea. Both typhoons generated strong near-inertial waves (NIW) as detected by a moored array, with the near-inertial velocity to the right of the typhoon path significantly larger than to the left. The estimated vertical phase and group velocities of the NIW induced by Typhoon Nesat are 0.2 cm s−1 and 0.85 m h−1, respectively, corresponding to a vertical wavelength of 350 m. Both the vertical phase and group velocities of the NIW induced by Typhoon Nalgae are lower than those of Typhoon Nesat, with the corresponding vertical wavelength only one-half that of Nesat. The threshold values of induced near-inertial kinetic energy (NIKE) of 5 J m−3 reach water depths of 300 and 200 m for Typhoons Nesat and Nalgae, respectively, illustrating that the NIKE induced by Typhoon Nesat dissipated less with depth. Obvious blueshifts in the induced NIW frequencies are also detected. The frequency of NIW induced by Typhoon Nesat significantly increases at water depths of 100–150 m because of Doppler shifting, but decreases significantly at water depths of 100–150 m for Nalgae because of the greater influence of the background vorticity during the passage of Typhoon Nalgae.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41676008 & 40876005), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFC14001403), and the National Program on Global Change and Air-Sea Interaction (Grant No. GASI-IPOVI-04).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Ocean and Meteorology, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, 524088, China

    Yonggui Ma & Shuwen Zhang

  2. Laboratory for Regional Oceanography and Numerical Modeling, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266237, China

    Shuwen Zhang

  3. College of Oceanography, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China

    Yiquan Qi

  4. State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China

    Zhiyou Jing

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  1. Yonggui Ma
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Correspondence to Shuwen Zhang.

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Ma, Y., Zhang, S., Qi, Y. et al. Upper ocean near-inertial response to the passage of two sequential typhoons in the northwestern South China Sea. Sci. China Earth Sci. 62, 863–871 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-018-9292-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-018-9292-3

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