A strong spring Wyrtki jet (WJ) presents in May 2013 in the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean. The entire buildup and retreat processes of the spring WJ were well captured by two adjacent Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers mounted on the mooring systems. The observed zonal jet behaved as one intraseasonal event with the significant features of abrupt emergence as well as slow disappearance. Further research illustrate that the pronounced surface westerly wind burst during late-April to mid-May, associated with the active phase of a robust eastward-propagating Madden–Julian oscillation in the tropical Indian Ocean, was the dominant reason for the rapid acceleration of surface WJ. In contrasting, the governing mechanism for the jet termination was equatorial wave dynamics rather than wind forcing. The decomposition analysis of equatorial waves and the corresponding changes in the ocean thermocline demonstrated that strong WJ was produced rapidly by the wind-generated oceanic downwelling equatorial Kelvin wave and was terminated subsequently by the westward-propagating equatorial Rossby wave reflecting from eastern boundaries of the Indian Ocean.

HY-2A (Haiyang-2A), launched in 2011, is the first ocean dynamic environment satellite of China and is equipped with a radar altimeter as one of the primary payloads. HY-2A shifted the drift orbit in March 2016 and has been accumulating geodetic mission (GM) data for more than three years with 168-day cycle. In this paper, we present the preliminary gravity field inverted by the HY-2A/GM data from March 2016 to December 2017 near Taiwan (21°–26°N, 119°–123°E). The gravity anomaly is computed by Inverse Vening Meinesz (IVM) formula with a one-dimensional FFT method during remove-restore procedure with the EGM2008 gravity model as the reference field. For comparison, CryoSat-2 altimeter data are used to inverse the gravity field near Taiwan Island by the same method. Comparing with the gravity field derived from CryoSat-2, a good agreement between the two data sets is found. The global ocean gravity models and National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) shipboard gravity data also are used to assess the performance of HY-2A/GM data. The evaluations show that HY-2A and CryoSat-2 are at the same level in terms of gravity field recovery and the HY-2A/GM altimeter-derived gravity field has an accuracy of 2.922 mGal. Therefore, we can believe that HY-2A will be a new reliable data source for marine gravity field inversion and has the potentiality to improve the accuracy and resolution of the global marine gravity field.

In previous studies, Lagrangian analyses were used to assess large-scale ocean circulation, and the Lagrangian coherent structure could also reveal the evolution of the two-dimensional structure of the mesoscale eddies. However, few studies have demonstrated the three-dimensional structure of the mesoscale eddies via Lagrangian analysis. Compared with previous studies, which investigated the eddy structure via a Eulerian view, we used a Lagrangian view to provide a different perspective to study the eddy structure. An idealized cyclonic mesoscale eddy is built up over a seamount, and it presents downwelling inside the eddy and upwelling alongside the eddy formed within a closed circulation system. This structure is difficult to display via a Eulerian analysis. However, the trajectories of particles can well demonstrate the full cycle: the fluid sank and rotated inside the eddies, converged to the upwelling zone of the bottom layer and returned to the surface through upwelling. We also applied a Lagrangian analysis to a realistic simulation. As a significant phenomenon in the South China Sea, the dipole structure of the anticyclonic eddy (AE)/cyclonic eddy (CE) pair off of central Vietnam has been well studied but mainly at the sea surface. With a Lagrangian analysis, we illustrate the three-dimensional structure of the eddy pair: the fluid sank (rose) and rotated inside the AE (CE). More importantly, the trajectories of the particles suggested that there was no fluid exchange between the two eddies since the strong boundary jet separates them from each other. All the conclusions above have been verified and are supported by the computational error estimate. With a selected time step and integral period, the computational errors always present small values, although they increase with strong divergent and vertical diffusive flow.

The sea surface temperature (SST) seasonal cycle in the eastern equatorial Pacific (EEP) plays an important role in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. However, the reasonable simulation of SST seasonal cycle in the EEP is still a challenge for climate models. In this paper, we evaluated the performance of 17 CMIP6 climate models in simulating the seasonal cycle in the EEP and compared them with 43 CMIP5 climate models. In general, only CESM2 and SAM0-UNICON are able to successfully capture the annual mean SST characteristics, and the results showed that CMIP6 models have no fundamental improvement in the model annual mean bias. For the seasonal cycle, 14 out of 17 climate models are able to represent the major characteristics of the observed SST annual evolution. In spring, 12 models capture the 1–2 months leading the eastern equatorial Pacific region 1 (EP1; 5°S–5°N, 110°–85°W) against the eastern equatorial Pacific region 2 (EP2; 5°S–5°N, 140°–110°W). In autumn, only two models, GISS-E2-G and SAM0-UNICON, correctly show that the EP1 and EP2 SSTs vary in phase. For the CMIP6 MME SST simulation in EP1, both the cold bias along the equator in the warm phase and the warm bias in the cold phase lead to a weaker annual SST cycle in the CGCMs, which is similar to the CMIP5 results. However, both the seasonal cold bias and warm bias are considerably decreased for CMIP6, which leads the annual SST cycle to more closely reflect the observation. For the CMIP6 MME SST simulation in EP2, the amplitude is similar to the observed value due to the quasi-constant cold bias throughout the year, although the cold bias is clearly improved after August compared with CMIP5 models. Overall, although SAM0-UNICON successfully captured the seasonal cycle characteristics in the EEP and the improvement from CMIP5 to CMIP6 in simulating EEP SST is clear, the fundamental climate models simulated biases still exist.

Between June 2015 and June 2017, two pressure-recording inverted echo sounders (PIESs) and five current and pressure-recording inverted echo sounders (CPIESs) deployed along a section across the Kerama Gap acquired a dataset of ocean bottom pressure records in which there was significant 21-day variability (P_bot21). The P_bot21, which was particularly strong from July–December 2016, was coherent with wind stress curl (WSC) on the continental shelf of the East China Sea (ECS) with a squared coherence of 0.65 for a 3-day time lag. A barotropic ocean model demonstrated the generation, propagation, and dissipation of P_bot21. The modeled results show that the P_bot21 driven by coastal ocean WSC in the ECS propagated toward the Ryukyu Island Chain (RIC), while deep ocean WSC could not induce such variability. On the continental shelf, the P_bot21 was generated nearly synchronously with the WSC from the coastline to the southeast but dissipated within a few days due to the effect of bottom friction. The detection of P_bot21 by the moored array was dependent on the 21-day WSC patterns on the continental shelf. The P_bot21 driven southeast of the Changjiang Estuary by the WSC was detected while the P_bot21 generated northeast of the Changjiang Estuary was not.

We investigate the air-sea momentum flux in the marine atmospheric boundary layer using a tower-based direct measurement method. First, we compare the collected data with previous observations, and the results are roughly consistent. Next, in the low-to-moderate winds, the exchange coefficients (or drag coefficients) deviate between onshore and offshore winds, which exhibits the influence of surface wave on the momentum flux. Furthermore, we use a surface-wave-involved parameterization scheme to explain the dependence of momentum flux on surface wave. The results consolidate the influence of surface wave on momentum flux on the one hand, and validate the surface-wave-involved parameterization scheme on the other hand.

This study presents an analysis of the spectral characteristics of remote sensing reflectance (R_rs) in northwestern South China Sea based on the in situ optical and water quality data for August 2018. R_rs was initially divided into four classes, classes A to D, using the max-classification algorithm, and the spectral properties of whole R_rs were characterized using the empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis. Subsequently, the dominant factors in each EOF mode were determined.The results indicated that more than 95% of the variances of R_rs are partly driven by the back-scattering characteristics of the suspended matter. The initial two EOF modes were well correlated with the total suspended matter and back–scattering coefficient. Furthermore, the first EOF modes of the four classes of R_rs (A–D R_rs–EOF₁) significantly contributed to the total variances of each R_rs class. In addition, the correlation coefficients between the amplitude factors of class A–D R_rs–EOF₁ and the variances of the relevant water quality and optical parameters were better than those of the unclassified ones. The spectral shape of class A R_rs–EOF₁ was governed by the absorption characteristic of chlorophyll a and colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM). The spectral shape of class B R_rs–EOF₁ was governed by the absorption characteristic of CDOM since it exhibited a high correlation with the absorption coefficient of CDOM (a_g (λ)), whereas the spectral shape of class C R_rs–EOF₁ was governed by the back-scattering characteristics but not affected by the suspended matter. The spectral shape of class D R_rs–EOF₁ exhibited a relatively good correlation with all the water quality parameters, which played a significant role in deciding its spectral shape.

In this study, oil spill experiments were performed in a water tank to determine changes in the surface scattering characteristics during the emulsification of oil spills. A C-band fully-polarimetric microwave scatterometer and a vector network analyzer were used to observe films of the following oils: crude oil with an asphalt content below 3% that is prone to emulsification (type A), fresh crude oil extracted from an oilfield (type B), and industrial crude oil that was dehydrated and purified (type C). The difference in the backscatter results between the emulsified oil film and the calm water surface under C-band microwaves and the influence of the emulsification of the oil film on the backscatter were analyzed in detail. The results demonstrate that under a low-wind and no-waves condition (the maximum wave height was below than 3 mm), the emulsification of crude oil could modulated the backscatter through changes in the surface roughness and the dielectric constant, where the surface roughness had the dominant effect. The surface backscatters of the type B oil were greater than that of the type C oil in both the emulsified and non-emulsified states. In the non-emulsified state, the average differences in the backscatter between the type B and C oils were 2.19 dB, 2.63 dB, and 2.21 dB for the polarization modes of VV, HH, and HV/VH, respectively. Smaller corresponding average differences of 0.98 dB, 1.49 dB, and 1.5 dB were found for the emulsified state with a 20% moisture constant for the oil film. The results demonstrated that the surface roughness of the different oil films could vary due to the differences in the oil compositions and the oil film properties, which in turn affect the backscatter of the oil film surface.

Recent studies have revealed that the predominant tidal constituents have seasonal variations at some locations. However, how to accurately obtain these variations remains a problem for the traditional harmonic analysis (HA) due to the tradeoff between length of time window and resolution of constituents. Therefore, a method named as “two-step HA” is developed in this study, which consists of both long- and short-time-window HA. Through a series of ideal experiments, practical application at two tidal gauges and comparison with the traditional HA, the feasibility and accuracy of the two-step HA are verified: The two-step HA performs better than the traditional HA in estimating monthly amplitudes and phases for the predominant constituents, whether they have seasonal variability or not. In addition to capturing variations of the predominant constituents at tidal gauges, the two-step HA would be useful in investigation of the coherence and incoherence of internal tides.

In the past nearly two decades, the Argo Program has created an unprecedented global observing array with continuous in situ salinity observations, providing opportunities to extend our knowledge on the variability and effects of ocean salinity. In this study, we utilize the Argo data during 2004–2017, together with the satellite observations and a newly released version of ECCO ocean reanalysis, to explore the decadal salinity variability in the Southeast Indian Ocean (SEIO) and its impacts on the regional sea level changes. Both the observations and ECCO reanalysis show that during the Argo era, sea level in the SEIO and the tropical western Pacific experienced a rapid rise in 2005–2013 and a subsequent decline in 2013–2017. Such a decadal phase reversal in sea level could be explained, to a large extent, by the steric sea level variability in the upper 300 m. Argo data further show that, in the SEIO, both the temperature and salinity changes have significant positive contributions to the decadal sea level variations. This is different from much of the Indo-Pacific region, where the halosteric component often has minor or negative contributions to the regional sea level pattern on decadal timescale. The salinity budget analyses based on the ECCO reanalysis indicate that the decadal salinity change in the upper 300 m of SEIO is mainly caused by the horizontal ocean advection. More detailed decomposition reveals that in the SEIO, there exists a strong meridional salinity front between the tropical low-salinity and subtropical high salinity waters. The meridional component of decadal circulation changes will induce strong cross-front salinity exchange and thus the significant regional salinity variations.