“…The SCS Throughflow acts as a heat and salt conveyor belt to bring large amounts of warm and saline Kuroshio water into the basin through the Luzon Strait (Gordon et al, ; Jia & Liu, ; Liu et al, ; Qu et al, ; Wang et al, ). The heat and salt exchange significantly affects the heat and salt balances in the SCS (Chen et al, ; Chen et al, ; Xiao et al, ; Zeng et al, , ; Zeng, Wang, Chen, et al, ).…”