Analysis of sea surface temperature fronts in the Taiwan Strait and its adjacent area using an advanced edge detection method

Abstract

A morphology-based edge detection method has been used to study sea surface temperature (SST) fronts in the Taiwan Strait and its adjacent area. The method is based on mathematical morphology with multi-dimensional and multi-structural elements. Using six years' SST data from September 2002 to August 2008, we distinguished the large SST front like Kuroshio Front as well as the smaller ones: namely Taiwan Bank Front, Zhe-Min Coastal Front and Zhang-Yun Ridge Front. The seasonal and monthly variations of these fronts were also studied. Generally, the SST fronts are stronger in winter but weaker in summer. And the fronts are at their active stage during the period from January to May but at their declining stage during the period from July to October.National Basic Research Program of China [2007CB411803, 2009CB421208]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [40576015, 40821063, 40810069004

Application of a sea surface temperature front composite algorithm in the Bohai, Yellow, and East China Seas

“…Furthermore, some new algorithms have been developed such as the gravitation algorithm (Ping et al, 2013(Ping et al, , 2014 and morphology algorithm (Pi and Hu, 2010).…”

“…In the fi rst step, a traditional front detection algorithm is applied to each SST map within the time series data. In the second step, the long-term mean frontal average gradient and frequency are calculated to reveal the front's variations (Shimada et al, 2005;Chang et al, 2008Chang et al, , 2010Pi and Hu, 2010;Yao et al, 2012).…”

MODIS observed phytoplankton dynamics in the Taiwan Strait: an absorption-based analysis

“…6a). This patch is likely associated with (1) shelf break upwelling in the vicinity of the Taiwan Bank (Li et al, 2000), (2) island stirring around Penghu Islands (Simpson and Tett, 1986) and (3) upwelling associated with Zhangyun Ridge (Pi and Hu, 2010). Frontal probabilities derived from MODIS SST during [2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009] are greater than 60% in the area corresponding to this Aph patch (Fig.…”

“…Behrenfeld et al, 2005;Westberry et al, 2008), it has a clear impact on the optical properties of the water, allowing its relatively straight-forward retrieval from remote sensing measurements (e.g. Sathyendranath et al, 1994). The most common pigment product retrieved from ocean color remote sensing is chlorophyll-a concentration (Chl, mg m −3 ; frequently used symbols throughout the manuscript are summarized in Table 1).…”

Double SST fronts observed from MODIS data in the East China Sea off the Zhejiang–Fujian coast, China

“…Besides the improvement of front delineation techniques (Pi and Hu, 2010;Sun et al, 2012), the spatial distribution and temporal variations of Zhe-Min coastal fronts are widely studied using satellite-derived SST data (Belkin and Cornillon, 2003;Belkin and O'Reilly, 2009;Chang et al, 2006Chang et al, , 2008Guo et al, 1995;He et al, 1995;Hickox et al, 2000;Huang et al, 2004;Huang et al, 2010;Lee et al, in press;Lou et al, 2005;Tseng et al, 2000;Yuan et al, 2005;Zheng and Klemas, 1982). Moreover, it was pointed out in Huang et al (2010) that, the coastal fronts in the Yellow and East China Seas are all located along the sharp bathymetry gradient in the inner shelf along the coasts.…”