Sea surface temperature (SST) is an important oceanic parameter which can be accessed easily and vastly by satellite remote sensing. Recent hydrographic observations suggested that the water temperature near Dongsha Atoll were affected by internal waves of South China Sea (SCS). This study hypothesizes that the SST variations near Dongsha Atoll and continental shelf cab be observed by satellite data. To test the hypothesis, MODIS SST data during January 2005 to December 2009 were collected and analyzed using harmonic and EOF analyses.
The results show that there can be a 1 ¢XC temperature drop, near Dongsha Atoll during the passage of internal waves, based on a longitudinal section cut for a typical SST image. The SST patterns in northern SCS are distributed lower in the east and higher in the west. The temperature showed an average of 0.5¢XC lower near Dongsha Atoll. Especially, the pattern of lower temperature near Dongsha is significant during neap tide in summer season. EOF analysis showed that the spatial distribution of SST aligned well with the bottom topography of the continental shelf. This result suggests that internal tide may be important to the vertical mixing in this region. The total variation of mode 1 in EOF accounted for 97.7% and is dominated by seasonal changes. For the long term and large area SST statistics, the internal wave induced variation is insignificant, as comparing the Dongsha region with shelf region and Kuroshio region.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0911112-165903 |
| Date | 11 September 2012 |
| Creators | Zheng, Jing-Wen |
| Contributors | Guan-Yu Chen, Ruo-Shan Tseng, Yu-Huai Wang |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0911112-165903 |
| Rights | unrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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