An eddy-borne Argo float measurement experiment in the South China Sea
- PDF / 3,144,288 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 26 Downloads / 147 Views
An eddy-borne Argo float measurement experiment in the South China Sea Chunyong Ma 1,2 & Zhanwen Gao 1 & Siqing Li 1 & Shuo Li 1 & Ge Chen 1,2 Received: 6 June 2019 / Accepted: 18 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Argo floats can be used to collect unique and spatiotemporally continuous eddy profiles as they are carried forward within eddies. Using satellite altimeter data, we designed and conducted an eddy-borne Argo float measurement experiment in a South China Sea (SCS) eddy generated in the southwest region of Taiwan. The Argo float was deployed at a location that was estimated to be in the eddy corridor on December 31, 2016. As a result, the Argo float continuously observed the target eddy for more than 2 months, and successfully obtained 62 valuable daily temperature (T) and salinity (S) profiles inside this eddy. From this Argo float’s movement, the smooth transition of the float speed and heading revealed that the eddy splitting identified by satellite altimeter data should be an artifact from January 14 to 18, 2017. In addition, it is found that the depth of thermocline is negative correlated with the normalized radial distance of the float to the eddy center, and the bowl-like shape of the thermocline depth can be revealed. The T-S diagram of Argo float profiles indicated that eddy water should be derived from the Kuroshio Current. The design and implementation of this experiment are a successful example of SCS eddy observation, which will undoubtedly guide oceanographers to obtain more effective eddy data. The development of an “Eddy-Argo” program designed for eddy observation is worthy of additional research in the future. Keywords South China Sea (SCS) eddies . Argo floats . Satellite altimeter . Tracking measurements
1 Introduction Eddies have been detected globally with the development of ocean satellite altimeter measurements, and their distribution has been widely studied (e.g., Chelton et al. 2007, 2011). The surface signatures and lifespan of South China Sea (SCS) eddies have also been well investigated based on the merged data products of satellite altimeters (Wang et al. 2003; Yuan et al. 2007; Xiu et al. 2010; Chen et al. 2011). To broadly study the subsurface SCS eddy structure, scientists have collected numerous in situ eddy measurements from cruise surveys (Wade and Heywood 2001; Hu et al. 2011; Nan et al. Responsible Editor: Aida Alvera-Azcárate * Ge Chen [email protected] 1
College of Information Science and Engineering, Ocean University of China, 238 Songling Road, Qingdao, Shan Dong Province 266100, People’s Republic of China
2
Laboratory for Regional Oceanography and Numerical Modeling, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, No.1 WenHai Road, Qingdao 266200, People’s Republic of China
2011; Chen et al. 2012; Chu et al. 2014; He et al. 2018) and have employed some unmanned observation platforms, which usually include moorings (Wang et al. 2015; Chen et al. 2015; Zhong et al. 2017), gliders (Zaba and Rudnick 20
Data Loading...
