Internal solitary waves on the southwest shelf of Dongsha Island observed from mooring ADCP

Internal solitary waves （ISWs） are frequently observed in the area between Dongsha Island （DI） and Taiwan Island. However, there have been few in-situ observations southwest of DI. To improve our knowledge of ISWs in this area, we observed the ISWs over the continental shelf （115.4°E, 20.3°N） from Aug. 29 to Oct. 10, 2011 with temperature sensors and an acoustic Doppler current profiler （ADCP）. The observations showed that the a fully developed ISW produced a current whose maximum westward velocity was 0.92 rrds and maximum northward velocity was 0.47 m/s. During the 41-day observation period the ISWs appeared for three periods with about 7-day gaps between each period. During each day, two types of ISWs were observed. The first type of wave arrived regularly diurnally at the same time each day, with a similar pattern to that of the type-a wave identified by Ramp et al. （2004）. The second type arrived about 12 h after the first type and was delayed about 1 hour each day; this wave type was related to the type-b wave. Thus, our observations confirmed that both type-a and type-b waves can reach the area southwest of the DI. Moreover, the waves observed by the mooring propagated toward the directions of 270°-315° clockwise from true north, indicating obvious refraction from uneven topography around DI.

Effects of high-order nonlinearity and rotation on the fission of internal solitary waves in the South China Sea

A variable coefficient, rotation-modified extended Kortweg-deVries （vReKdV） model is applied to the study of the South China Sea （SCS）, with focus on the effects of the high-order （cubic） nonlinearity and the rotation on the disintegration process of large-amplitude （170 m） Internal Solitary Waves （ISWs） and the semi-diurnal internal tide propagating from the deep basin station to the slope and shelf regions in a continuously stratified system. The numerical solutions show that the high-order nonlinearity significantly affects the wave profile by increasing the wave amplitude and the phase speed in the simulated area. It is shown that the initial KdV-type ISW will decay faster when the rotation dispersion is considered, however the wave profile does not change significantly and the rotation effect is not important. The simulations of the semi-diurnal internal tide indicate that the phase of the wave profile is shifted earlier when the rotation effect is included. A solitary wave packet emerges on the shelf, and the wave speed is also greater when considering the rotation dispersion. In addition, the effects of the background currents are discussed further in this paper It is found that the background currents generally change the magnitude and occasionally change the sign of the nonlinear coefficients in the northern SCS.