Advanced Understanding of Sea Surface Cooling Off Northeastern Taiwan to Tropical Cyclone by Using Numerical Modeling

• Published in: Atmosphere Vol. 15; no. 6; p. 663
• Main Authors: Wu, Hsin-Ju, Zheng, Zhe-Wen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2024
• Subjects: Advection; Coasts; Cooling; Heat budget; Hurricanes; Investigations; ISO standards; Kuroshio intrusion; Marine environment; Maximum winds; Modelling; Numerical models; Ocean models; Oceanic analysis; regional oceanic modeling system (ROMS); Regions; Sea surface; Sea surface cooling; Sea surface temperature; Sensors; Stratification; Surface cooling; Surface temperature; tidal forcing; Tidal mixing; Tropical cyclones; typhoon; Typhoons; Vertical advection; Vertical distribution; Wind; Winds; Hong Kong China; South China Sea; Philippine Sea; China; Philippines; Taiwan
• DOI: 10.3390/atmos15060663
• ISSN: 2073-4433

From 2001 to 2020, three typhoons with similar moving paths and intensities were found to trigger markedly different cooling off northeastern Taiwan. They were typhoons Utor (2001), Nuri (2008), and Hagupit (2008), which led to maximum sea surface temperature (SST) cooling temperatures of 8.8, 2.7, and 1.4 °C, respectively. The drastic cooling discrepancy implies that the existing understanding of the key mechanism leading to the cooling off northeastern Taiwan could be insufficient. For further exploring the key reason(s) contributing to the marked discrepancy, a regional oceanic modeling system (ROMS) was used to reconstruct the background oceanic environment corresponding to three typhoon passages. Results show that the wide radius of maximum winds of typhoon Utor contributes to the strongest SST cooling by enhancing the Kuroshio intrusion (KI) onto the shelf northeast of Taiwan. Heat budget diagnostics explain why including tidal forcing can substantially promote SST cooling. The process was associated mainly with a stronger vertical advection tied to the influence of de-stratification by tidal mixing. Finally, warmer Taiwan Strait currents, driven by wind forcing the typhoons to pass zonally through the north South China Sea, intruded clockwise into the Longdong coast and accelerated the recovery of sea surface cooling around Longdong.