THE CHARACTERISTICS OF INTERNAL SOLITARY WAVES AT WENCHANG IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
南海文昌海域内孤立波特征观测研究

Thermistor chains and acoustic Doppler current profiles were deployed at the east of Hainan Island to examine the thermal and hydrodynamic structure of the Wenchang Shelf. These instruments sampled temperature every minute and current velocity every 10 min from April 17th to July 21 in 2005. Analysis of the time series revealed that the in situ data were dominated by internal solitary wave packets signals. We found large-amplitude nonlinear internal solitary waves at the end of April and they propagated to the southwest paralleling with the isobaths in this area. They probably resulted from the local shelf break and were rarely observed in SAR data.