Abstract
Three seabed-mounted TD/CTD chains and two upward-looking acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) in the southwest of Zhangzi Island are used and a simultaneous cruise observation in the northern North Yellow Sea (NYS) is conducted to study temperature variation in the bottom thermal front zone of the NYS Cold Water Mass (NYSCWM) during the summer of 2009. In the flood-ebb tidal cycles, the bottom temperature decreases (increases) during flood (ebb) tides, which are dominated by the tidal-current induced horizontal advection. The ebb tide-induced temperature increase is larger than the flood tide-induced temperature decrease due to seasonal warming. In the spring-neap tidal cycles, the temperature and the vertical temperature structure show notable fortnightly variation from 16 July to 25 August. The bottom temperature increases from neap to spring tides and decreases from spring to neap. The Richardson number demonstrates strengthened vertical mixing during spring tides but enhanced stratification during neap tides. The spring-neap variation in vertical shear caused by tidal current is the dominant factor that induces the fortnightly variation in vertical mixing and thus bottom temperature.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the Ocean & Atmosphere Data Center of Ocean University of China for providing the data. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. U1706215, 41506012, 41430963 and 41606005). We would like to thank Drs. Zhigang Yao and Xiaodong Huang at Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography (Ocean University of China) for helpful discussion.
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Xia, Y., Bao, X., Song, D. et al. Tidal Effects on the Bottom Thermal Front of North Yellow Sea Cold Water Mass near Zhangzi Island in Summer 2009. J. Ocean Univ. China 18, 751–760 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-019-3892-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-019-3892-8