Abstract
Wind and waves are key components of the climate system as they drive air-sea interactions and influence weather systems and atmospheric circulation. In marine environments, understanding surface wind and wave fields and their evolution over time is important for conducting safe and efficient human activities, such as navigation and engineering. This study considers long-term trends in the sea surface wind speed (WS) and significant wave height (SWH) in the China Seas over the period 1988–2011 using the Cross-Calibrated Multi-Platform (CCMP) ocean surface wind product and a 24-year hindcast wave dataset obtained from the WAVEWATCH-III (WW3) wave model forced with CCMP winds. The long-term trends in WS and SWH in the China Seas are analyzed over the past 24 years to provide a reference point from which to assess future climate change and offshore wind and wave energy resource development in the region. Results demonstrate that over the period 1988–2011 in the China Seas: 1) WS and SWH showed a significant increasing trend of 3.38 cm s−1 yr−1 and 1.52 cm yr−1, respectively; 2) there were notable regional differences in the long-term trends of WS and SWH; 3) areas with strong increasing trends were located mainly in the middle of the Tsushima Strait, the northern and southern areas of the Taiwan Strait, and in nearshore regions of the northern South China Sea; and 4) the long-term trend in WS was closely associated with El Niño and a significant increase in the occurrence of gale force winds in the region.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their constructive comments that helped to improve this paper. This work was supported by the Global Change and Ocean-Atmosphere Interaction National Special Project (No. 2016-523), the open foundation of the Key Laboratory of Renewable Energy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. Y707k31001), the Junior Fellowships for CAST Advanced Innovation Think-Tank Program (No. DXB-ZKQN- 2016-019), the National Key Basic Research Development Program (No. 2012CB957803), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41490642, 41405062, 71371148), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 3132017301), and the Science foundation of China (Xi’an) Silk Road Academy (No. 2016SY02).
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Zheng, C., Zhang, R., Shi, W. et al. Trends in significant wave height and surface wind speed in the China Seas between 1988 and 2011. J. Ocean Univ. China 16, 717–726 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-017-3213-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-017-3213-z