Study on the amplitude inversion of internal waves at Wenchang area of the South China Sea

• Published in: Acta oceanologica Sinica Vol. 35; no. 7; pp. 14 - 19
• Main Authors: Zhang, Xudong, Wang, Jing, Sun, Lina, Meng, Junmin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Beijing The Chinese Society of Oceanography 01.07.2016; Springer Nature B.V; College of Information and Engineering, 0cean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China%First Institute of 0ceanography, State 0ceanic Administration, Qingdao 266061, China
• Subjects: Acoustics; Amplitude; Amplitudes; Climatology; Coefficients; Distance; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Ecology; Engineering Fluid Dynamics; Environmental Chemistry; Experiments; Internal waves; KdV方程; Marine; Marine & Freshwater Sciences; NLS方程; Oceanography; Propagation; R&D; Radar imaging; Remote sensing; Research & development; SAR (radar); Satellite imagery; Sensors; Spectroradiometers; Synthetic aperture radar; Thermistor chains; Wave packets; Wavelength; Waves; 中等分辨率成像光谱仪; 内波; 南海地区; 卫星图像; 反演; 振幅; South China Sea; China; Hainan Island; ISEW, South China Sea; ISEW, China, People's Rep., Hainan Prov., Hainan I; China, People's Rep; Wenchang area; amplitude inversion; remote sensing image; nonlinear Schrödinger equation; internal wave; nonlinear Schr?dinger equation
• ISSN: 0253-505X; 1869-1099
• DOI: 10.1007/s13131-016-0902-1

The field experiment is conducted from April 16, 2005 to July 20, 2005 at Wenchang area east of Hainan Island （19~35＇N, l12~E） of China. Internal wave packets are observed frequently with thermistor chains during the experiment. Meanwhile, internal waves are also detected from a synthetic aperture radar （SAR） image on June 19, 2005 and several other moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer （MODIS） images near a mooring position. The distance between the positive and negative peaks induced by the internal wave can be obtained from satellite images. Combined with remote sensing images and in situ data, a new method to inverse the amplitude of the internal wave is proposed based on a corrected nonlinear Schr6dinger （NLS） equation. Two relationships are given between the peak-to-peak distance and the characteristic wavelength of the internal wave for different nonlinear and dispersion coefficients. Based on the satellite images, the amplitude inversion of the internal waves are carried out with the NLS equation as well as the KdV equation. The calculated amplitudes of the NLS equation are close to the observation amplitude which promise the NLS equation a reliable method.