Research Activities in the East and South China Seas - Taiwan
Tswen Yung David Tang
Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China
1. Introduction
This paper introduces national research activities involving Taiwan's two marginal seas, East China Sea (ECS) and South China Sea (SCS). A program entitled "Kuroshio Edge Exchange Process," (KEEP) initiated in 1989, is the leader among activities in ECS. Its studying area is mainly confined in the shelf break region northeast of Taiwan where the Kuroshio Current collides with the stiff shelf break. The water exchange between the ECS and Kuroshio is expecting to be violent. In fact, the subsurface Kuroshio water was found persistently on the shelf north of Taiwan. The pathway of Kuroshio intrusion and its temporal variability is one of major objective to be investigated. Presently, the circulation pattern in the studying area and its temporal variation are generally understood. These results will be stated in later section.
There are two national research programs involved in the SCS. One entitled "South China Sea Study" was initiated in 1995 to study the general hydrographic properties in the SCS. The other is related to the international program "South China Sea Monsoon Experiment (SCSMEX)" which started in 1996. These two programs may probably be merged and concentrate on the survey of general condition of physical oceanography. The air-sea interaction will also be studied, specially the relation between the monsoon and water circulation. We will introduce the proposed work of these two programs in later sections.
The paper is proceeding as follows. Section 2 introduces some new findings from the KEEP program. A brief background on the studying area is also given. The proposed work
