Regional Oceanography

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Regional

Oceanography

of the

South China Sea

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NEW JERSEY ^• LONDON ^• SINGAPORE ^• BEIJING ^• SHANGHAI ^• HONG KONG ^• TAIPEI ^• CHENNAI ^• TOKYO

World Scientific

Editors

Jianyu Hu

Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China

Chung-Ru Ho

National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan

Lingling Xie

Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong, China

Quanan Zheng

University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

Regional

Oceanography

of the

South China Sea

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Published by

World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224

USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601 UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hu, Jianyu, editor. | Zheng, Quanan, 1943– Advances in research on regional oceanography of the South China Sea. | World Scientific (Firm), publisher.

Title: Regional oceanography of the South China Sea / editors, Jianyu Hu [and three others].

Description: New Jersey : World Scientific, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019027699 | ISBN 9789811206900 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Oceanography--South China Sea.

Classification: LCC GC801 .R44 2019 | DDC 551.46/1472--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027699

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the publisher.

For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher.

For any available supplementary material, please visit

https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/11461#t=suppl

Typeset by Stallion Press Email: enquiries@stallionpress.com Printed in Singapore

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Preface

The South China Sea is the largest, almost enclosed marginal sea of the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Its western boundary consists of the lands, while eastern and southern boundaries consist of the islands. Its water body is connected to the adjacent oceans and seas through plenty of narrow straits and passages: the East China Sea through the Taiwan Strait, the Pacific through the Luzon Strait, the Sulu Sea through the Balabac Strait, the Java Sea through the Karimata Strait and the Indian Ocean through the Malacca Strait, respectively. The South China Sea is surrounded by nine countries: China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, which account for over 2.0 billion human inhabitants (in 2018), or about 26.3% of the world population.

Since ancient times, the South China Sea has served as a convenient navigation waterway for the East Asian and Southeast Asian nations to communicate with each other and with other nations of the world. Even today, the South China Sea is among the busiest waterways in the world because of the size and the high growth rates of the region in the world’s economy and trade. The South China Sea is rich in fishery and biomass resources which feed millions of people, as well as reserves huge amount of fossil energy resources which are of strategic significance for regional and world economic development. Thus, systematic and in-depth studies of this important marginal sea are of significance not only regionally, but also globally.

In the past decades, oceanographers from surrounding countries and regions have dedicated continuous efforts to the research of the South China Sea. This book collects updated understanding and knowledge in the regional oceanography of the South China Sea. The book consists of 16 chapters, which may be summed up in the following groups according to the contents: Overview (Chapter 1), Marine geology and oil and gas resources (Chapter 2), General hydrology and circulation (Chapters 3, 4, 12 and 16), Mesoscale and submesoscale processes (Chapters 5, 6, 11,

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vi Preface

14 and 15), Coupling of the South China Sea with the Pacific (Chapters 7, 8 and 10) and Coupling of the SCS with the atmosphere (Chapters 9 and 13).

The editors appreciate contributions of the authors of each chapter. It is impossible to publish this book without their cooperation. The National Natural Science Foundation of China project (U1405233), “A study of water exchanges and interaction between the Taiwan Strait and the Luzon Strait”, provided partial support to cooperative research and academic exchanges, some results of which are collected in this book. The publishing of this book is also supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91958203).

Quanan Zheng, Ph.D.

Research Scientist Emeritus

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About the Editors

Jianyu Hu received his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the Tohoku University of Japan in 2001 and a Ph.D. in Engineering in Environmen- tal Science from the Xiamen University of China in 2002. He is currently a Professor at the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Xiamen University, China. His main research interest is in regional environmental oceanography, especially in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

Chung-Ru Ho received his Ph.D. in Applied Ocean Science from the University of Delaware, USA, in 1994. He was Deputy Director General of the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology. He is now a Professor with the National Taiwan Ocean University. His research interests include eddy current interaction, typhoon–ocean interaction, global change and ocean renewable energy. Dr. Ho is currently serving as a member of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and is Taiwan’s representative for the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO), one of the eight associations of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG). He served as the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Marine Science and Technology and as a Guest Editor for Advances in Meteorology, Atmospheric Research, Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and Remote Sensing. He now serves as a member on the editorial board for Remote Sensing and for the Journal of Marine Science and Technology.

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viii About the Editors

Lingling Xie obtained her Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the Ocean University of China in 2009. She is a Professor of Physical Oceanog- raphy in the College of Ocean and Meteorology, Guangdong Ocean University. Her research interests include ocean circulation, mixing and interaction of multiscale processes. Dr. Xie has published more than 45 papers in internationally circulated journals such as the Journal of Physical Oceanog- raphy, Journal of Oceanography and Journal of Marine Systems. She is an editorial board member for the Journal of Atmo- spheric Science Research and has been serving as a reviewer for several journals.

Quanan Zheng received a Diploma in Physics from Jilin University, China in 1966 and a Ph.D. in Phys- ical Oceanography from the Institute of Oceanol- ogy, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1987. He is a Research Scientist Emeritus at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. Dr. Zheng is an Honorary Professor of the First Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources and a Guest Chair Professor of Guangdong Ocean Uni- versity, China. He is an Associate Editor-in-Chief on the editorial board of Acta Oceanologica Sinica and the Journal of Ocean University of China, an Associate Editor for Advances in Data Science and Adaptive Analysis and a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Oceanology and Limnology. Dr. Zheng is a member of the American Geophysical Union.

As of 13 February 2019, Dr. Zheng has 181 publications, 14,952 citations, 25,074 reads, an RG Score of 39.95 and an h-index of 31 to his credit.

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About the Contributors

Chengzhu Xu received his B.Sc. degree from McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, in 2013, and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, in 2015 and 2019, respectively. He has a research background in geophysical fluid dynamics, and his current research focuses on internal solitary waves.

By means of numerical simulations performed on high-performance computing clusters, his research findings contribute to the understanding of the onset and growth of shear instability in ISWs and the breaking of ISWs over topo- graphical features.

Ching-Yuan Lu received his master’s degree in Marine Environmental Informatics from the National Taiwan Ocean University in 2017. He is at present a Ph.D. candidate. His research focuses on satellite and physical oceanography, oceanic eddy and trapped waves.

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x About the Contributors

Haibin Song is a Professor at the School of Ocean and Earth Science, Tongji University, China. He majored in marine geophysics. He received his Ph.D. in 1996 from Tongji University. His main research interest is in the reflection seismic study of the continental margin system, including seismic oceanography, cold seep system and marine gas hydrates. He has published three books, namely Introduction to Seismic Oceanography (2012), Geophysical Researches on Gas Hydrates (2003) and Inversion Research on Elastic Parameters of Stratified Media (2002), and has been the lead or corresponding author for more than 60 journal papers. He won the first national-wide 100 excellent Ph.D. dissertations award from the State Council in 1999 and the Fu Chengyi prize from the Chinese Geophysical Society in 1998.

Hanbang Peng received his master’s degree and graduated from the College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Xiamen University in 2017. He majored in Physical Oceanography. He has been mainly engaged in marine hydrological forecasting since 2017.

Hongyang Lin received his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the Xiamen University, Xiamen, China, in 2014. He was a visiting Ph.D.

student at the Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, from 2012 to 2014. He has been an Associate Professor at Xiamen University since 2018. His research interests include the oceanic mesoscale and sub-mesoscale dynamics, tilts of coastal mean sea level, etc.

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About the Contributors xi

Jia Zhu obtained her B.S. (2003) and M.S. (2006) degrees in Physical Oceanography from Xiamen University. She is currently an engineer at the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science (Xiamen University). Her fields of research include hydrodynamic process analysis based on the marine field observations, water mass analysis and numerical study on tides.

Jianping Gan received his Ph.D. from McGill Uni- versity, Canada. Currently, he is a Chair Professor at the Department of Ocean Science & Depart- ment of Mathematics, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. He conducts hardcore scientific studies on ocean circulation, marine ecosys- tem dynamics and numerical ocean modeling in the China Seas. His research interlinks the processes over the estuary–shelf–open ocean basin.

He has conducted interdisciplinary research in cou- pled physical–biogeochemical dynamics through numerical modeling, field measurement and process studies in the ocean.

Jiuxing Xing received his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Reading in 1992. He worked at the National Oceanography Centre (Liverpool, UK, formerly the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory) from 1992 to 2013.

He is currently working at the Graduate School at Shenzhen of Tsinghua University. He mainly uses numerical simulations to investigate the dynamics of shelf seas, such as internal tides, fronts, near- inertial motions and their interactions.

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xii About the Contributors

Junyi Li currently works at the College of Ocean and Meteorology, Guangdong Ocean University, China. He received his B.S. degree in Physical Oceanography from the Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China, in 2008, and his Ph.D. in Physi- cal Oceanography from Xiamen University in 2016.

He was a Visiting Research Scientist at the Depart- ment of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, Univer- sity of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA, from 2013 to 2015. He conducts research on ocean dynamics and remote sensing. His current research interests include continental shelf wave and wave–wave nonlinear interaction.

Kewei Lyu received his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanog- raphy from Xiamen University, Xiamen, China, in 2015. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia. His research interests include sea-level variability and change, regional oceanography of the South China Sea and applications of ocean remote sensing products.

Kun Zhang is a Ph.D. student at the School of Ocean and Earth Science, Tongji University. His major is in geophysics.

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About the Contributors xiii

Mingming Li received her Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Bremen in 2013. She has been working at the Guangdong Key Laboratory of Coastal Ocean Variability and Disaster Predic- tion, Guangdong Ocean University since 2014. Her research focuses on turbulent mixing processes in the ocean and coastal regions. This comprises their characteristics, dependent factors and influence on dynamical environments in various regions such as deep ocean, continental shelf, estuaries and straits.

Nan-Jung Kuo received his Ph.D. from the Univer- sity of Delaware. He is a Professor with the National Taiwan Ocean University. His research interests include remote sensing, satellite oceanography and regional ocean dynamics.

Peigen Lin is a postdoctoral investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanography Institution (WHOI).

He got his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from Xiamen University, China, where he focused on coastal upwelling in the northern South China Sea, particularly on the east coast of Hainan and in the Taiwan Strait. He also worked at WHOI as a guest student for the last 2 years of his Ph.D. program, when he started to explore the then-upcoming field on high-latitude processes, e.g., upwelling in the Beaufort Sea. Other than his studies in this field, he currently works on the circulation in the Chukchi Sea and boundary currents in the Arctic, the Denmark Strait overflow water and the linkage to Atlantic meridional over- turning circulation. To collect data, he has been on over 10 cruises in the South China Sea, the Arctic and the North Atlantic.

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xiv About the Contributors

Po-Chun Hsu received his Ph.D. in Marine Environ- mental Informatics from the National Taiwan Ocean University in 2018. His research interests include satellite and physical oceanography, island wake, Kuroshio currents and ocean–typhoon interaction.

Qi Quan received his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanogra- phy from the South China Sea Institute of Oceano- logy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2018. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China. His research interests include the characteristics, evolution and dynamics of water current circulation in the South China Sea.

Quran Wu received his Ph.D. in Physical Oceano- graphy from the College of Ocean and Earth Sci- ences at Xiamen University in 2018. During his Ph.D. period, he first worked on oceanic fronts in the South China Sea, then switched to study the dynamics of ocean heat uptake and sea-level rise.

He is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK.

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About the Contributors xv

Ruo-Shan Tseng received his B.S. degree in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from the National Cheng Kung University in 1976 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physical Oceanog- raphy from the National Taiwan University in 1978 and University of Delaware, USA, in 1987, respectively. He is a Professor at the Department of Oceanography, National Sun Yat-sen Univer- sity in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His research interests include coastal circulation, air–sea interaction and ocean turbulence in meso- to sub-mesoscale processes in the ocean. He adopts in situ observation using research vessels, moored and shipboard instruments, to examine ocean dynamics.

Sen Jan is a Professor at the Institute of Oceanog- raphy, National Taiwan University. His research interests include the dynamics of meso- to sub- mesoscale processes in the ocean, impacts of typhoons on the upper ocean and the variability of the North Pacific western boundary current (i.e., the Kuroshio) off the east coast of Taiwan.

He adopts in situ observation using research ves- sels, moored instruments, and gliders together with process-oriented numerical modeling to examine the ocean dynamics.

Shaoqing Sun is a master’s student at the School of Ocean and Earth Science, Tongji University. Her major is in geophysics.

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xvi About the Contributors

Shengli Chen studied Physical Oceanography in Xiamen University between 2004 and 2014, during which he obtained his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. Then, he began working at the Graduate School at Shenzhen at the Tsinghua University in 2015 as a postdoc and currently is a research assistant. He studies physical oceanography in shelf seas and coastal waters. His areas of interest include typhoon- induced near-inertial motion, barotropic and baro- clinic tides, frontal instability, seiche and plume.

He aims to further the understanding of oceanography through a combina- tion of observations, mathematical equations and numerical modeling.

Wei Zhuang received his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the Chinese Academy of Sci- ences. He is now an Associate Professor at Xia- men University. His research interests cover a wide range of topics on ocean dynamics and tropical air–sea interactions. He has published 29 papers on various topics such as ocean circulation, sea level changes, cross-basin transport and oceanic mesoscale processes.

Xiaohui Xie is a Physical Oceanographer from the Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Nat- ural Resources. He received his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011. As a physical oceanographer, he is interested in studying all aspects associated with internal waves and turbu- lence in the ocean, mainly through in situ observa- tions and numerical models.

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About the Contributors xvii

Xiaolin Bai received his B.S. degree in Ocean Science from Xiamen University, China, in 2012 and his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from Xiamen University, China, in 2018. During his Ph.D. program (March 2015–September 2017), he was a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Applied Mathe- matics, University of Waterloo, Canada. The main topic of his Ph.D. work was investigating the shoal- ing process of nonlinear internal waves in the north- eastern South China Sea by the combined use of field measurements, satellite observations and numerical simulations. He is currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His current research interests include internal solitary waves, mesoscale eddies and their interactions.

Yi-Chun Kuo received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University and is currently a postdoc at the Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University. Her area of expertise is numerical modeling and air–sea interaction.

Zhe-Wen Zheng received his Ph.D. in Marine Envi- ronmental Informatics from the National Taiwan Ocean University in 2010. He is a Professor with the National Taiwan Normal University. His research interests include remote sensing, numerical modeling, regional ocean dynamics and typhoon–ocean interaction.

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xviii About the Contributors

Zhenyu Sun received the master’s degree in phys- ical oceanography from First Institute of Oceanog- raphy, State Oceanic Administration of China, in 2006. He is now a senior engineer in Xiamen University. His research interest includes in situ ocean observation, ocean circulation, and regional oceanography.

Zhida Huang received his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from Xiamen University, China, in 2016. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher with Xiamen University, China. His research interests include mesoscale eddies, ocean circulation, ocean dynamics and applications of ocean remote sensing products in the South China Sea.

Zhigang He is an Associate Professor at the College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Xiamen University, China. His research interests include circulation in the South China Sea, water exchange through straits between the South China Sea and its adjacent area, circulation in the Indonesian Seas and ocean observation technology including, but not limited in, application and assessment of tra- ditional instruments, application and development of new instruments and platforms and their data processing.

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Regional Oceanography

Regional

Oceanography

of the

South China Sea

World Scientific

Regional

Oceanography

of the

South China Sea

Preface

About the Editors

About the Contributors

Contents