Factors influencing the climatological mixed layer depth in the South China Sea: numerical simulations

Enhanced vertical mixing within mesoscale eddies due to high frequency winds in the South China Sea

“…In winter in the upper 30-40 m, the modeled profiles are all characterized by colder temperatures than SODA and on average in good agreement with ORA-S3. Day-Day and 6h-6h display a significant temperature decrease compared to Mon-Mon, up to 0.3 degrees on average over the whole domain and up to 1 degrees in locations where the bathymetry is predominately flat (see for example in Figure 4), due to enhanced mixing of surface warm waters within the mixed layer, in agreement with similar studies in the Pacific (Fan et al, 2010, Chen et al, 1999Liu, 2005 andSui et al, 2003) and Southern Ocean in austral summer (Kamenkovich, 2005). Immediately below the mixed layer (~ 35 m) the differences between the three runs decrease.…”

“…This is not a generic result, but specific to the SCS and is related to its latitude, given that the variability of the heat fluxes is somehow limited in the tropics, and to the eddy formation mechanism. In conclusions, the principal factor that modifies the mixed layer depth in the SCS is 15 the wind stress, and minor differences are attributable to the net heat and fresh water fluxes, in agreement with the findings of Fan et al, (2010).…”

“…Three runs, analyzed throughout this work, make use of equal temporal resolution for wind and heat fluxes respectively, and are indicated in Table 1 as Mon-Mon, Day-Day and 6h-6h. We also performed a second group of sensitivity integrations to verify that our conclusions depended primarily on the HF wind contribution as already shown for the SCS by (Fan et al, 2010) by maintaining six hourly wind forcing and using monthly-, dailyor 6-hourly varying heat fluxes (6h-Mon and 6h-Day, to be considered together with 6h-6h).…”

Physical drivers of chlorophyll variability in the open South China Sea

“…The change of the MLD in the SCS is mainly related to wind stress, net surface heat flux, and net freshwater flux [Qu et al, 2007;Fan et al, 2010;Duan et al, 2012]. Among these three factors, wind stress and net surface heat flux are more important [Fan et al, 2010;Duan et al, 2012].…”

“…The change of the MLD in the SCS is mainly related to wind stress, net surface heat flux, and net freshwater flux [Qu et al, 2007;Fan et al, 2010;Duan et al, 2012]. Among these three factors, wind stress and net surface heat flux are more important [Fan et al, 2010;Duan et al, 2012]. The net surface heat flux is the sum of sensible heat flux, latent heat flux, net shortwave radiation, and net longwave radiation [Shinoda et al, 1998;Zhang et al, 2012].…”