Submesoscale fronts observed by satellites over the Northern South China Sea shelf |
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| Institution: | 1. School of Marine Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, 219 Ningliu Road, Nanjing, 210044, China;2. School of Oceanography, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 1954 Huashan Road, Shanghai, China;3. Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, Guangdong, China |
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| Abstract: | Fronts are ubiquitous dynamic processes in the ocean, which play a significant role in the ocean dynamical and ecological environments. In this paper strong temperature fronts are investigated on the shelf of the Northern South China Sea using high resolution satellite data. These fronts have large horizontal gradients exceeding 1 °C km?1 with spatial scales around several kilometers. The fronts generate meanders and eddies due to baroclinic instability, since these instabilities have spatial scales around the local first baroclinic mode deformation radius. The estimated Rossby number of the fronts is O(0.4), suggesting that the fronts tend to be ageostrophic and show submesoscale features. The Finite Size Lyapunov Exponent analysis of the generation mechanism indicates that the fronts are tightly related to the combined flow straining of geostrophic and Ekman currents. |
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| Keywords: | Sea surface temperature Fronts Submesoscale The South China Sea Baroclinic instability |
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