Title: Temporal Variations of the Internal Tide Multimodal Structure on the Continental Shelf of the South China Sea

Journal: Chinese Journal of Oceanology and Limnology, 1:70-78, doi:10.1007/s00343-016-5168-0

Authors: GAO D. -L., G. -Z. Jin*, and X. -Q. Lv

Abstract: 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.