THE REGIONAL AIR-SEA COUPLED OSCILLATION IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

This study examined the regional air sea coupled interaction in the South China Sea (SCS), based on the 1979-1995 NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data of sea surface temperature (SST) and meridional wind (V component). Singular value decomposition (SVD) and single field principal component analysis (PCA) were employed to analyse the SST and V anomalies and compare the results with each other. It was found that the leading mode of SVD explained a predominant amount of squared covariance between the SST and meridional wind V, and that the time series expansion coefficients of the first mode between SST and V from PCA and SVD resembled very much each other. This infers that the meridional wind, as an indicator of Asian monsoon, is closely related with the SST through the air sea interaction in the SCS. The spatial patterns of the first mode of SST and V exhibit ellipse shaped variance in the SCS center and a NE SW oriented main axis, which are much similar to those in winter season. These results show that the most active center for both V and SST is in the SCS, which suggests that a regional air sea coupled oscillation possibly exists there for the whole year and is noticeable especially during the winter season. So the SCS is a very important region for the forming of the Asian Monsoon and the climate of the west Pacific.