Characterization of mesoscale eddies in the southern South China Sea from 2010 to 2019

Abstract Based on the satellite altimeter data for a total of ten years from 2010 to 2019, the mesoscale eddies in the southern region of the South China Sea are characterized in terms of spatial and temporal distributions using the method Windin-Angle(WA) and several eddy attributes, including the frequency of occurrence, the mean radius, the mean amplitude, the mean kinetic energy, and the mean vorticity, are mainly discussed. 14488 anticyclonic eddies and 14116 cyclonic eddies are identified, and the ten-year data are averaged monthly to obtain the variation of eddy attributes with the month, and the southern part of the South China Sea region is divided into a number of 1 ° × 1 ° grids, and the spatial distributions of ten-yearly averaged eddy attributes are analyzed to obtain the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of the eddies in the southern part of the South China Sea. The eddy center of the next day is inside the boundary of an eddy to track the eddy, and the eddy with a lifetime of not less than one week is screened out for the analysis of movement, and it is obtained that most of the eddies move westward and a few of them move eastward after the eddy is generated, most of the eddy lifetimes are less than 30 days, and the average velocity of the eddy moves between 10 cm/s and 20 cm/s with a more uniform distribution.