South China Sea Warm Pool Detected in Spring From the Navy's Master Oceanographic Observational Data Set (MOODS)
Abstract
A South China Sea warm pool with sea surface temperature (SST) higher than 29.5C, recently reported by Chu and Chang [1995a, b] and Chu et al. [1997}, appears in the central South China Sea (west of the Luzon Island) in boreal spring, strengthens until the onset of the summer monsoon (mid-May) and then weakens and disappears at the end of May. The transient features and interannual variabilities of the warm pool have not yet been studied. Here we use a subset of the U.S. Navy's Master Oceanographic Observation Data Set (MOODS) to investigate the surface thermal features. First, we employed an optimal interpolation scheme to build up a 10-day interval synoptic data set for December 1963 to November 1984 on a 0.50 x 10 grids (finer resolution in zonal direction) from the MOODS SST data. An ensemble mean SST field (T) was established with a rather weak horizontal gradient (28.5C near the Palawan Island to 26C near the southeast China coast). Second, we performed a composite analysis to obtain the averaged SST anomaly field T deviating from the ensemble mean for the winter and spring seasons (December- May). During December-March, T is negative almost everywhere throughout the whole South China Sea. In early April, positive T with closed isoline (warm pool) was evident west of Luzon Island. In May, the central SCS warm anomaly becomes stronger. On May 11-20, the central SCS warm pool (114c-119c E, 14c-19c N) has T > 18C.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA480257
Entities
People
- C. P. Chang
- Hsing-chia Tseng
- J. M. Chen
- Peter Cheng Chu
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School