Seasonal circulation and influence factors of the

Authors: Jinhua Wang Yongming Shen Yakun Guo

Publish Date: 2010/10/09

Volume: 60, Issue: 6, Pages: 1581-1596

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Abstract

Seasonal circulation of the Bohai Sea BS in 1992 was investigated using Lagrangian particle tracking method The hydrography of the BS was simulated based on an unstructured grid finitevolume threedimensional primitive equation ocean model With the use of the unstructured triangular grid the model can easily fit the irregular coastal boundary of the BS The simulated tides tidal current and thermohaline field agreed well with the observations The transport of particles has threedimensional structure in the BS Compared with central Bohai and Bohai Strait the differences of particles’ transportation between surface and bottom layer in three bays are small The circulation in the summer is stronger than that in the winter with the average residual velocity in the surface layer being about 37 cm/s during the summer while only 18 cm/s during the winter Using the same model several welldesigned numerical experiments were performed to investigate the effect of oceanic tide river discharge wind stress and thermal stratification on the circulation It is shown that winds play an important role in the circulation of the BS during both the winter and the summer Density circulation is important during the summer however it is negligible during the winter River runoff only affects the area around the river mouth Compared with wind and thermohaline effect the contribution of tides is small during the summer and the circulation under only M2 tidal constituent could not reflect the actual circulation of the BSThis research is sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No50839001 by the National Basic Research Program of China under Grant No 2006CB403302 and by the Scientific Research Foundation of the Higher Education Institutions of Liaoning Province under Grant No2006T018 The authors are also grateful to three anonymous reviewers for providing constructive comments on earlier versions of this manuscript

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