Trends of sea surface temperature and sea surface temperature fronts in the South China Sea during 2003-2017

Yu Yi; Zhang Hao-Ran; Jin Jiangbo; Wang Yuntao

doi:10.1007/s13131-019-1416-4

Article Contents

Article Navigation > Acta Oceanologica Sinica > 2019 > 38(4): 106-115

Yu Yi, Zhang Hao-Ran, Jin Jiangbo, Wang Yuntao. Trends of sea surface temperature and sea surface temperature fronts in the South China Sea during 2003-2017[J]. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 2019, 38(4): 106-115. doi: 10.1007/s13131-019-1416-4

Citation:

Yu Yi, Zhang Hao-Ran, Jin Jiangbo, Wang Yuntao. Trends of sea surface temperature and sea surface temperature fronts in the South China Sea during 2003-2017[J]. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 2019, 38(4): 106-115. doi: 10.1007/s13131-019-1416-4

Citation:

PDF( 2442 KB)

Trends of sea surface temperature and sea surface temperature fronts in the South China Sea during 2003-2017

doi: 10.1007/s13131-019-1416-4

1.
State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China
2.
State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China;College of Oceanography, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
3.
International Center for Climate and Environment Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China
4.
State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou 310012, China;State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China

Received Date: 2018-06-26

Abstract

Abstract

The trends of the sea surface temperature (SST) and SST fronts in the South China Sea (SCS) are analyzed during 2003-2017 using high-resolution satellite data. The linear trend of the basin averaged SST is 0.31℃ per decade, with the strongest warming identified in southeastern Vietnam. Although the rate of warming is comparable in summer and winter for the entire basin, the corresponding spatial patterns of the linear trend are substantially different between them. The SST trend to the west of the Luzon Strait is characterized by rapid warming in summer, exceeding approximately 0.6℃ per decade, but the trend is insignificant in winter. The strongest warming trend occurs in the southeast of Vietnam in winter, with much less pronounced warming in summer. A positive trend of SST fronts is identified for the coast of China and is associated with increasing wind stress. The increasing trend of SST fronts is also found in the east of Vietnam. Large-scale circulation, such as El Niño, can influence the trends of the SST and SST fronts. A significant correlation is found between the SST anomaly and Niño3.4 index, and the ENSO signal leads by eight months. The basin averaged SST linear trends increase after the El Niño event (2009-2010), which is, at least, due to the rapid warming rate causing by the enhanced northeasterly wind. Peaks of positive anomalous SST and negatively anomalous SST fronts are found to co-occur with the strong El Niño events.
- South China Sea,
- sea surface temperature,
- sea surface temperature fronts,
- warming trend,
- wind stress

FullText(HTML)

References(44)

References

Barth J A, Menge B A, Lubchenco J, et al. 2007. Delayed upwelling alters nearshore coastal ocean ecosystems in the northern California current. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(10):3719-3724, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0700462104

Belkin I M, Cornillon P C, Sherman K. 2009. Fronts in large marine ecosystems. Progress in Oceanography, 81(1-4):223-236, doi: 10.1016/j.pocean.2009.04.015

Blunden J, Arndt D S. 2015. State of the climate in 2014. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 96(7):ES1-ES32, doi: 10.1175/2015BAMSStateoftheClimate.1

Blunden J, Arndt D S. 2016. State of the climate in 2015. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 97(8):Si-S275, doi: 10.1175/2016BAMSStateoftheClimate.1

Blunden J, Arndt D S. 2017. State of the climate in 2016. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 98(8):Si-S280, doi: 10.1175/2017BAMSStateoftheClimate.1

Bracegirdle T J. 2013. Climatology and recent increase of westerly winds over the Amundsen Sea derived from six reanalyses. International Journal of Climatology, 33(4):843-851, doi: 10.1002/joc.v33.4

Cai Rongshuo, Zhang Qilong, Qi Qinghua. 2009. Spatial temporal oscillation and long-term variation in sea surface temperature field of the South China Sea. Journal of Oceanography in Taiwan Strait (in Chinese), 28(4):559-568

Carton J A, Giese B S, Grodsky S A. 2005. Sea level rise and the warming of the oceans in the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) ocean reanalysis. Journal of Geophysical Research:Oceans, 110(C9):C09006

Chelton D B, Xie S P. 2011. Coupled ocean-atmosphere interaction at oceanic mesoscales. Oceanography, 23(4):52-69

Cheng Lijing, Jiang Zhu. 2018. 2017 was the warmest year on record for the global ocean. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 35:3261-3263

Cheng Xuhua, Qi Yiquan. 2007. Trends of sea level variations in the South China Sea from merged altimetry data. Global and Planetary Change, 57(3-4):371-382, doi: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2007.01.005

Dee D P, Uppala S M, Simmons A J, et al. 2011. The ERA-Interim reanalysis:Configuration and performance of the data assimilation system. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 137(656):553-597, doi: 10.1002/qj.v137.656

Esaias W E, Abbott M R, Barton I, et al. 1998. An overview of MODIS capabilities for ocean science observations. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 36(4):1250-1265, doi: 10.1109/36.701076

Falvey M, Garreaud R D. 2009. Regional cooling in a warming world:Recent temperature trends in the southeast Pacific and along the west coast of subtropical South America (1979-2006). Journal of Geophysical Research:Atmospheres, 114(D4):D04102

Fang Guohong, Chen Haiying, Wei Zexun, et al. 2006. Trends and interannual variability of the South China Sea surface winds, surface height, and surface temperature in the recent decade. Journal of Geophysical Research:Oceans, 111(C11):C11S16

Fyfe J C, Gillett N P, Zwiers F W. 2013. Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years. Nature Climate Change, 3(9):767-769, doi: 10.1038/nclimate1972

Gao Xiumin, Wei Zexun, Lv Xianqing, et al. 2015. Numerical study of tidal dynamics in the South China Sea with adjoint method. Ocean Modelling, 92:101-114, doi: 10.1016/j.ocemod.2015.05.010

Jing Zhioyu, Qi Yiquan, Fox-Kemper B, et al. 2016. Seasonal thermal fronts on the northern South China Sea shelf:Satellite measurements and three repeated field surveys. Journal of Geophysical Research:Oceans, 121(3):1914-1930, doi: 10.1002/2015JC011222

Knight J, Kennedy J J, Folland C, et al. 2009. Do global temperature trends over the last decade falsify climate predictions? In state of the climate in 2008. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 90(8):22-23

Levitus S, Antonov J, Boyer T. 2005. Warming of the world ocean, 1955-2003. Geophysical Research Letters, 32(2):L02604

Liu Qinyu, Kaneko A, Su Jilan. 2008. Recent progress in studies of the South China Sea circulation. Journal of Oceanography, 64(5):753-762, doi: 10.1007/s10872-008-0063-8

Liu W T, Xie Xiaosu. 1999. Space based observations of the seasonal changes of South Asian monsoons and oceanic responses. Geophysical Research Letters, 26(10):1473-1476, doi: 10.1029/1999GL900289

Liu Qinyu, Zhang Qi. 2013. Analysis on long-term change of sea surface temperature in the China Seas. Journal of Ocean University of China, 12(2):295-300, doi: 10.1007/s11802-013-2172-2

Lluch-Cota S E, Tripp-Valdéz M, Lluch-Cota D B, et al. 2013. Recent trends in sea surface temperature off Mexico. Atmósfera, 26(4):537-546, doi: 10.1016/S0187-6236(13)71094-4

Meehl G A, Arblaster J M, Fasullo J T, et al. 2011. Model-based evidence of deep-ocean heat uptake during surface-temperature hiatus periods. Nature Climate Change, 1(7):360-364, doi: 10.1038/nclimate1229

Moradi M, Kabiri K. 2015. Spatio-temporal variability of SST and Chlorophyll-a from MODIS data in the Persian Gulf. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 98(1-2):14-25, doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.07.018

Park Y G, Choi A. 2016. Long-term changes of South China Sea surface temperatures in winter and summer. Continental Shelf Research, 143:185-193

Rayner N A, Parker D E, Horton E B, et al. 2003. Global analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice, and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century. Journal of Geophysical Research:Atmospheres, 108(D14):4407, doi: 10.1029/2002JD002670

Schmidt G A, Shindell D T, Tsigaridis K. 2014. Reconciling warming trends. Nature Geoscience, 7(3):158-160, doi: 10.1038/ngeo2105

Shi Rui, Guo Xinyu, Wang Dongxiao, et al. 2015. Seasonal variability in coastal fronts and its influence on sea surface wind in the northern South China Sea. Deep Sea Research Part Ⅱ:Topical Studies in Oceanography, 119:30-39, doi: 10.1016/j.dsr2.2013.12.018

Smith S D. 1988. Coefficients for sea surface wind stress, heat flux, and wind profiles as a function of wind speed and temperature. Journal of Geophysical Research:Oceans, 93(C12):15467-15472, doi: 10.1029/JC093iC12p15467

Su Jilan. 2004. Overview of the South China Sea circulation and its influence on the coastal physical oceanography outside the Pearl River Estuary. Continental Shelf Research, 24(16):1745-1760, doi: 10.1016/j.csr.2004.06.005

Thompson B, Tkalich P, Malanotte-Rizzoli P. 2017. Regime shift of the South China Sea SST in the late 1990s. Climate Dynamics, 48(5-6):1873-1882, doi: 10.1007/s00382-016-3178-4

Thomson R E, Emery W J. 2014. Data Analysis Methods in Physical Oceanography. 3rd ed. Waltham, MA:Elsevier Science, 639-664

Trenberth K E, Jones P D, Ambenje P, et al. 2007. Observations:surface and atmospheric climate change. In:Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, et al., eds. Climate Change 2007:The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge and New York:Cambridge University Press, 235-336

Wang Yuntao, Castelao R M, Yuan Yeping. 2015. Seasonal variability of alongshore winds and sea surface temperature fronts in Eastern Boundary Current Systems. Journal of Geophysical Research:Oceans, 120(3):2385-2400, doi: 10.1002/2014JC010379

Wang Yuntao, Castelao R M. 2016. Variability in the coupling between sea surface temperature and wind stress in the global coastal ocean. Continental Shelf Research, 125:88-96, doi: 10.1016/j.csr.2016.07.011

Wang Dongxiao, Xie Qiang, Du Yan, et al. 2002. The 1997-1998 warm event in the South China Sea. Chinese Science Bulletin, 47(14):1221-1227

Wang Zhaoyun, Zhai Fangguo, Li Peiliang. 2016. A shift in the upper-ocean temperature trends in the South China Sea since the late 1990s. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 35(11):44-51, doi: 10.1007/s13131-016-0947-1

Wyrtki K. 1961. Physical oceanography of the southeast Asian waters. Scientific Results of Marine Investigations of the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand, NAGA Rep. 2. Scripps Institution of Oceanography. La Jolla, California:ICAc Press, 1-225

Xie Shangping, Xie Qiang, Wang Dongxiao, et al. 2003. Summer upwelling in the South China Sea and its role in regional climate variations. Journal of Geophysical Research:Oceans, 108(C8):3261, doi: 10.1029/2003JC001867

Xue Huijie, Chai Fei, Pettigrew N, et al. 2004. Kuroshio intrusion and the circulation in the South China Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research:Oceans, 109(C2):C02017

Yang Haiyuan, Wu Lixin. 2012. Trends of upper-layer circulation in the South China Sea during 1959-2008. Journal of Geophysical Research:Oceans, 117(C8):C08037

Zhang Liping, Wu Lixin, Lin Xiaopei, et al. 2010. Modes and mechanisms of sea surface temperature low-frequency variations over the coastal China seas. Journal of Geophysical Research:Oceans, 115(C8):C08031

Relative Articles

Supplements(0)

Cited By

Proportional views