Temporal And Spatial Characteristics Of Sea Surface Wind And Significant Wave Height In China Seas

The wind system over the China seas plays an important role in climate variation there. In this paper, ERS-2 scatterometer winds were analyzed and compared to NCEP winds and buoy winds in the same period and location, to assess how the ERS-2 data reflect the real wind regime, at least for this area. The results indicate that ERS-2 scatterometer winds are closer to buoy observations than NCEP winds.A combination of ERS-1/2 scatterometer winds and Quik Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) winds covering the period from December 1992 to November 2005 and the area of 2oN-41 oN, 105 oE-130 oE were analyzed with interpolation and averaging methods, and the monthly mean distributions of the sea surface wind field were given. The seasonal characteristics of wind field in the China seas were analyzed.A vector empirical orthogonal function (VEOF) method was employed to study the temporal and spatial patterns. The results indicate that annual cycles dominate the two leading VEOF modes. The first VEOF accounts for 72.31% of the total variance and represents a winter-summer oscillation mode. It reflects the East Asian monsoon feature in the China seas. The second VEOF accounts for 10.05% of the total variance and represents a spring-autumn oscillation. It reflects the wind field features during the transition period from the summer monsoon to the winter monsoon or vise...