Abstract
The optimum multiparameter (OMP) method was often used to determine the percentages of water masses based on temperature, salinity and other parameters, like nutrient or dissolved oxygen (DO). There are a number of water masses in the East China Sea (ECS), a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. However, it is difficult to clarify the proportion of water masses using traditional parameters, such as temperature, salinity, nutrient or DO because of the occurring of intensive biogeochemical processes in the near shore and shelf areas. Here, we reported the use of 234U/238U activity ratio embedded in the OMP method. The results indicate that seawater in the northern ECS mainly consisted of the estuarine water of Changjiang River (CEW), Kuroshio water (KW), and Yellow Sea Coastal Current (YSCC). In March 2017, the CEW only influenced the offshore waters shallower than 30 m; the KW affected the east edge and the YSCC contributed more than 75% in the northern ECS.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Dr. Teng Cong for the help in using MAT-LAB. We also thank the laboratory staff for their help during sampling and analysis. We thank the Key Laboratory of Marine Chemistry Theory and Technology of Ministry of Education for the assistance (No. 227). This is MCTL contribution No. 142.
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Foundation item: The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 41876077 and 41530965; the National Key Research and Development Program of China under contract No. 2016YFA0601300.
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Shang, T., Jiang, X. & Yu, C. 234U/238U as a potential tracer for tracking water masses mixing in the northern East China Sea. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 40, 23–31 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-021-1773-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-021-1773-7