On the heat budget and water mass exchange in the Andaman Sea
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On the heat budget and water mass exchange in the Andaman Sea Jiawen Liao1, 4, Shiqiu Peng1, 2, 3, 4*, Xixi Wen1 1 State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, Guangzhou 510301, China 2 Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou), Guangzhou 511458, China 3 Institution of South China Sea Ecology and Environmental Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou,
510301 China 4 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
Received 24 February 2020; accepted 8 April 2020 © Chinese Society for Oceanography and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
The characteristics of the T/S structures, water mass exchange and deep circulation in the Andaman Sea are investigated based on the simulation from a high-resolution general circulation model (MITgcm). The results show that, below 1 000 m, the water mass is saltier, warmer and more homogeneous in the Andaman Sea than that in the Bay of Bengal, attributing to the strong vertical mixing at the depth of ~1 800 m. The water mass exchange between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal goes through three major channels, which manifests itself as follows: the northern channel (Preparis Channel) is the main passage of water mass transport from the Bay of Bengal to the Andaman Sea, whereas the Middle Channel (the south of Andaman Islands and the north of Nicobar Islands) has an opposite transport; the southern channel (Great Channel) features with a four-layer water exchange which results in the least net transport among the three channels; all the transports through the three channels have an intra-annual variation with a period of half a year. At 1 000-m depth, the entire Andaman Sea is occupied by a cyclonic circulation in January and July while by an anticyclonic one in April and October. The semiannual cycle found in both the deep circulation and water mass exchange is likely associated with the downwelling eastward-propagating Kelvin waves induced by the semiannual westerly component in the equatorial Indian Ocean during intermonsoon seasons. Key words: Andaman Sea, heat budget, water mass exchange, deep water circulation Citation: Liao Jiawen, Peng Shiqiu, Wen Xixi. 2020. On the heat budget and water mass exchange in the Andaman Sea. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 39(7): 32–41, doi: 10.1007/s13131-019-1627-8
1 Introduction The Andaman Sea is a semi-enclosed marginal sea in the northeastern Indian Ocean, bounded by Myanmar on the north, Thailand and Malaysia on the east and the Andaman and Nicobar archipelagos on the west which separates the basin from the BOB (hereinafter denoted as BOB) (Fig. 1). It is connected to the BOB through three main channels: the Preparis Channel with a shallow depth of approximately 250 m, the Middle Channel including few passages between the south of Andaman islands and the north of Nicobar islands with a maximum depth of approximately 800 m, and the Great Channel with a maximum depth of approximat
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