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Near-inertial waves in the wake of 2011 Typhoon Nesat in the northern South China Sea

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Abstract

In September 2011, Typhoon Nesat passed over a moored array of instruments recording current and temperature in the northern South China Sea (SCS). A wake of baroclinic near-inertial waves (NIWs) commenced after Nesat passed the array. The associated near-inertial currents are surface-intensified and clockwise-polarized. The vertical range of NIWs reached 300 m, where the vertical range is defined as the maximum depth of the horizontal near-inertial velocity 5 cm/s. The current oscillations have a frequency of 0.709 9 cycles per day (cpd), which is 0.025f higher than the local inertial frequency. The NIWs have an e-folding time-scale of 10 d based on the evolution of the near-inertial kinetic energy. The depth-leading phase of near-inertial currents indicates downward group velocity and energy flux. The estimated vertical phase velocity and group velocity are 0.27 and 0.08 cm/s respectively, corresponding to a vertical wavelength of 329 m. A spectral analysis reveals that NIWs act as a crucial process to redistribute the energy injected by Typhoon Nesat. A normal mode and an empirical orthogonal function analysis indicate that the second mode has a dominant variance contribution of 81%, and the corresponding horizontal phase velocity and wavelength are 3.50 m/s and 420 km respectively. The remarkable large horizontal phase velocity is relevant to the rotation of the earth, and a quantitative analysis suggests that the phase velocity of the NIWs with a blue-shift of 0.025f overwhelms that of internal gravity waves by a factor of 4.6.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Bing Yang & Yijun Hou

  2. Institute of Oceanology, Key Laboratory of Chinese Academy of Sciences for Ocean Circulation and Waves, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Bing Yang & Yijun Hou

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Bing Yang

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  1. Bing Yang
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  2. Yijun Hou
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Correspondence to Yijun Hou.

Additional information

Foundation item: The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos U1133001, 41030855 and 41376027; the National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program) of China under contract No. 2013AA09A502.

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Yang, B., Hou, Y. Near-inertial waves in the wake of 2011 Typhoon Nesat in the northern South China Sea. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 33, 102–111 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-014-0559-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-014-0559-6

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