Temporal variations in internal tide multimodal structure on the continental shelf, South China Sea

Temporal variations in multimodal structures of diurnal( D_1) and semidiurnal( D_2) internal tides were investigated on the continental slope of the Dongsha Plateau, based on 2-month moored acoustic Doppler current profiler observations. Harmonic analysis indicated that the D_1 components( K_1 and O_1) dominated the internal tide field. The vertical structure of the K_1 constituent presented a first-mode structure while the M_2 constituent seemed to exhibit a high-mode structure. Amplitude spectra analysis of the current data revealed differences in baroclinic current amplitudes between different water depths. Temporal variations in modal structures ware analyzed, based on the D_1 and D_2 baroclinic tides extracted from the baroclinic velocity field with band-pass filters. Analysis showed that the magnitude of the D_1 internal tide current was much larger than the D_2 current, and temporal variations in the modal structure of the D_1 internal tide occurred on an approximately fortnightly cycle. The EOF analyses revealed temporal transformation of multimodal structures for D_1 and D_2 internal tides. The enhancement of the D_1 internal tide was mainly due to the superposition of K_1 and O_1, according to the temporal variation of coherent kinetic energy.