Abstract
Abstract. The Gulf of Thailand is dominated by diurnal tides, which might be taken to indicate that the resonant frequency of the gulf is close to one cycle per day. However, when applied to the gulf, the classic quarter-wavelength resonance theory fails to yield a diurnal resonant frequency. In this study, we first perform a series of numerical experiments showing that the gulf has a strong response near one cycle per day and that the resonance of the South China Sea main area has a critical impact on the resonance of the gulf. In contrast, the Gulf of Thailand has little influence on the resonance of the South China Sea main area. An idealized two-channel model that can reasonably explain the dynamics of the resonance affecting the Gulf of Thailand is then established in this study. We find that the resonant frequency around one cycle per day in the main area of the South China Sea can be explained with the quarter-wavelength resonance theory, and the large-amplitude response at this frequency in the Gulf of Thailand is basically a passive response of the gulf to the increased amplitude of the wave in the southern portion of the main area of the South China Sea.
Highlights
The Gulf of Thailand (GOT) is an arm of the South China Sea (SCS), the largest marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean (Fig. 1)
The GOT is dominated by diurnal tides, and the strongest tidal constituent is K1 (Aungsakul et al, 2011; Wu et al, 2015)
The GOT is dominated by diurnal tides, indicating that the response near the diurnal tide frequency in the GOT is stronger than that at other frequencies
Summary
The Gulf of Thailand (GOT) is an arm of the South China Sea (SCS), the largest marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean (Fig. 1). Wu et al (2013) reproduced the tidal system well with superimposed incident and reflected Kelvin waves and a series of Poincare modes This result raises the question of whether the quarter-wavelength resonant theory can explain the tidal resonance in the gulf, as is the case with other areas (Miles and Munk, 1961; Garrett, 1972; Sutherland et al, 2005). According to quarter-wavelength theory, because the distance from the head of the gulf to the mouth is approximately 660 km and the mean depth is approximately 36 m, the resonant frequency should be 0.61 cpd, which is much lower than the estimates by Cui et al (2015) and Tomkratoke et al (2015). By considering the bathymetry of the SCSB in numerical experiments and theoretical analyses, we investigate the reasons for the GOT to have a strong response around the frequency of one cycle per
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