The study on seasonal characteristics of water masses in the western East China Sea shelf area
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The study on seasonal characteristics of water masses in the western East China Sea shelf area ZHANG Qilong1,2*, LIU Hongwei1,2, QIN Sisi1,2,3, YANG Dezhou1,2, LIU Zhiliang1,2 1
Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, China Key Laboratory of Ocean Circulation and Waves (KLOCAW), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, China 3 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China 2
Received 20 November 2013; accepted 8 July 2014 ©The Chinese Society of Oceanography and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract On the basis of the CTD data and the modeling results in the winter and summer of 2009, the seasonal characteristics of the water masses in the western East China Sea shelf area were analyzed using a cluster analysis method. The results show that the distributions and temperature-salinity characteristics of the water masses in the study area are of distinct seasonal difference. In the western East China Sea shelf area, there are three water masses during winter, i.e., continental coastal water (CCW), Taiwan Warm Current surface water (TWCSW) and Yellow Sea mixing water (YSMW), but four ones during summer, i.e., the CCW, the TWCSW, Taiwan Warm Current deep water (TWCDW) and the YSMW. Of all, the CCW, the TWCSW and the TWCDW are all dominant water masses. The CCW, primarily characterized by a low salinity, has lower temperature, higher salinity and smaller spatial extent in winter than in summer. The TWCSW is warmer, fresher and smaller in summer than in winter, and it originates mostly from the Kuroshio surface water (KSW) northeast of Taiwan, China and less from the Taiwan Strait water during winter, but it consists of the strait water and the KSW during summer. The TWCDW is characterized by a low temperature and a high salinity, and originates completely in the Kuroshio subsurface water northeast of Taiwan. Key words: East China Sea, water mass, seasonal characteristics, Taiwan Warm Current water Citation: Zhang Qilong, Liu Hongwei, Qin Sisi, Yang Dezhou, Liu Zhiliang. 2014. The study on seasonal characteristics of water masses in the western East China Sea shelf area. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 33(11): 64–74, doi: 10.1007/s13131-014-0556-9
1 Introduction The western East China Sea shelf area is a region where open sea current, such as the Kuroshio and its branch (Taiwan Warm Current) interacts strongly with the coastal current, such as Changjiang River diluted water and northern Jiangsu coastal current. The Kuroshio is the northern branch of the North Equatorial Current and enters the East China Sea between Taiwan and the Ishigaki Islands. The Kurohsio water in the East China Sea could be divided into four water masses in summer, i.e., the Kuroshio surface water (KSW), the Kuroshio subsurface water (KSSW), the Kuroshio intermediate water (KIW) and the Kuroshio deep water (KDW) (Zhang and Weng, 1985; Qi et al., 2014), but during winter, there are only three water masses (KSW, KIW and KDW) because the KSSW is replaced by the KSW due to the strong vertical m
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