Land-Ocean Interaction Affected by the Monsoon Regime Change in Western Taiwan Strait

Rick J Yang,Hon-Kit Lui,Jimmy J Xu,James T Liu,Chih-Chieh Su,Yi Chang

doi:10.3389/fmars.2021.735242

Rick J Yang, Hon-Kit Lui + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.735242

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Abstract

The Taiwan Strait is a conduit between East China Sea (ECS) and South China Sea (SCS). Seasonal monsoon winds drive the southbound Zhejiang-Fujian Coastal Current and northbound SCS Warm Current through the strait. Water masses carried by these major current systems also carry fluvial signals from two major rivers, the Changjiang (Yangtze) River in ECS and the Zhujiang (Pearl) River in SCS through the strait. Here we show a switch occurred to signify the monsoon regime change on the western side of this conduit around 10:00 on May 8, 2015. Our data came from water mass properties and environmental proxies of N/P ratio in the surface water and 7Be and 210Pbex isotopes in surface sediments. The timings of the demarcation were identical in the water column and on the water-sediment interface. Our findings put a specific time point in the monsoon regime change in 2015.

Highlights

Major rivers in the world contribute approximately 40% of fresh water and particulate material to the global ocean (Milliman and Meade, 1983; Corbett et al, 2004; Dagg et al, 2004)
The 0◦ wind direction is defined as the wind blowing from the north, and the wind direction from the east is at 90◦
During the time series observation period, the first half was dominated by northeasterly winds and the second half was dominated by southerly winds

Summary

Introduction

Major rivers in the world contribute approximately 40% of fresh water and particulate material to the global ocean (Milliman and Meade, 1983; Corbett et al, 2004; Dagg et al, 2004). The fate of river exported material in the distal marine environments is dominated by marine processes such as wind, tide, and coastal currents (Berdeal et al, 2002; Liu et al, 2002, 2009, 2021; Nittrouer et al, 2021). The scene of this study is in the Taiwan Strait (TS), which connects two major Asian marginal seas, the ESC and the SCS (Jan et al, 2010; Hu et al, 2019), where two world large rivers the Changjiang River (CJR) and the Zhujiang River (ZJR), function as distal sources to the TS (Figure 1A).

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