Interaction between Upwelling and Internal Tide in the East Qiongzhou Strait Areas

Abstract

An upwelling event that occurred off the east Hainan Island coast in summer 2010 is captured by processing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sea surface temperature (SST) data. High resolution Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) is employed to study this upwelling event, and is proved to provide good reproduction of this upwelling event by comparing ROMS SST with MODIS SST. It is detected that internal tide generated and interacted with the upwelling in the east Qiongzhou Strait areas. The upwelling and the internal tide modulated each other: the uplift of the isopycnal due to the fluctuation of the internal tide enhanced the upwelling; in another aspect, the upwelling changed the background stratification which is sufficient to control the amount of barotropic-to-baroclinic energy conversion and the preferred direction of baroclinic energy flux [21].