Gravimetry-based terrigenous freshwater extension in the southwestern South China Sea and its response to monsoon under ENSO

Abstract

Terrigenous discharge represents a mass movement from land to oceanic environment. While previous studies characterized terrigenous freshwater via oceanographic (physical and biochemical) data, the persistent fresh water in the far-field ocean via satellite-gravimetric observation has been rarely explored. This paper aims to characterize the spatiotemporal extension of Mekong freshwater and the interchangeable role of runoff and climatic factors in the southwestern South China Sea. Employing wavelet coherence analysis between the in situ runoff and oceanic freshwater variations inferred from satellite gravimetry, the coherence and transport duration were obtained at annual, intra- and inter-annual time scales during 2003–2015. Despite weak relationship at 6-month and 24-month scales in regions away from the estuary, the two time series remained significantly correlated at the 12-month scale with a highly positive coherence over 0.97. Spatial pattern of the annual transport duration further indicated that freshwater firstly flowed alongshore before turning eastward offshore, qualitatively consistent with the northeastward western boundary current and an anticyclonic eddy during the summertime generated from the ocean circulation model. Using partial wavelet coherence, the time-variable relationship at all these three scales was found closely related to the Indian Monsoon and Western North Pacific Monsoon. A series of alternating ENSO events during 2007–2011 were responsible for the inter-annual variations, contributing <5 % to the seasonal freshwater extension. Compared with the averaged transport duration of the isotope method (i.e., 21.5 days) and the geostrophic current computation (i.e., 38.8 days) in the summer of 2007, our method yielded a comparable transport duration of 23.9 days with smaller uncertainties. The wind-driven Ekman transport, however, was primarily responsible for the anticyclonic movement of freshwater transport in the southwestern South China Sea during late summer.