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An Overview of Internal Solitary Waves in the South China Sea

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Abstract

Internal solitary waves (ISWs) are the nonlinear large amplitude waves existing in the oceanic pycnocline. They are very active in the northern South China Sea (SCS). With more and more remote sensing data, in situ observational data and the development of the numerical simulation technology, a number of studies on the characteristics, the source site, the generation, and evolution of the ISWs in the SCS are reported. In this paper, earlier studies on the ISWs in the SCS are summarized and some problems worthy of study are put forward.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to the anonymous referees for helpful comments. This work was jointly supported by National Basic Research Program No. 2011CB013701 and NSFC Grant No. 41025019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China

    Shuqun Cai, Jieshuo Xie & Jianling He

  2. Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jieshuo Xie & Jianling He

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  1. Shuqun Cai
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  2. Jieshuo Xie
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Correspondence to Shuqun Cai.

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Cai, S., Xie, J. & He, J. An Overview of Internal Solitary Waves in the South China Sea. Surv Geophys 33, 927–943 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-012-9176-0

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