J Oceanogr (2011) 67:675–676
DOI 10.1007/s10872-011-0078-4

SPECIAL SECTION: EDITORIAL

Regional Environmental Oceanography in the South
China Sea and Its Adjacent Areas (REO-SCS): II

A summary of special section: regional environmental
oceanography in the South China Sea and its adjacentareas (REO-SCS)
Jianyu Hu • Jiayi Pan • Xinyu Guo •Quanan Zheng

Published online: 28 October 2011Ó The Oceanographic Society of Japan and Springer 2011

The South China Sea (SCS) is an important marginal sea inthe western Pacific Ocean, surrounded by 9 countries:
Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Since ancienttimes, the SCS has served as a convenient navigationwaterway for the Southeast Asian nations to communicate
with each other and with nations of the outside world. Upto now, the SCS has been one of the busiest waterways in
the world because of the weight and high growth rate of theregion in the world economy and trade (Zheng et al. 2006).
It is an inexorable trend, therefore, for the oceanographersfrom surrounding countries to pay more and more attentionto the research of regional environmental oceanography inthe SCS and its adjacent areas.
The special section ‘‘Regional Environmental Oceanography in the South China Sea and Its Adjacent Areas(REO-SCS),’’ which aims to deliver the latest research
results to the readers, appears in two issues, 4 and 6,
Volume 67, Journal of Oceanography. The special section

J. Hu (&)
State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science,
Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian 361005, Chinae-mail: hujy@xmu.edu.cnJ. Pan
Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, China
X. GuoCenter for Marine Environmental Studies, Ehime University,
2-5 Bunkyo-Cho, Matsuyama 790-8577, JapanQ. Zheng
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science,
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA

includes 11 original papers and an introduction paper (Huet al. 2011). The key points are summarized as follows.
For the mesoscale dynamics studies, Zheng et al. (2011)
analyze the interaction of nonlinear Rossby eddies with theKuroshio at the Luzon Strait using the satellite altimetersea level data from 1993 to 2008, indicating that the eddies
with a radius larger than 150 km are strong enough tosignificantly alter the Kuroshio path and are able to modify
the local circulation pattern. Chen et al. (2011a) extend theKorteweg–de Vries equation to the Benjamin–Ono equation and determine the internal solitary wave amplitude in
the SCS deep basin west of the Luzon Strait from satellite
and in situ measurements.
There are two papers focused on studying near-inertial
oscillation (NIO) in the SCS. Sun et al. (2011a) observe an
NIO burst event in the western SCS by an upward-looking
mooring acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) insummer 2004 and reveal that typhoon ‘‘Chanchu’’ is amajor mechanism to trigger the NIO burst event. Sun et al.
(2011b) detect strong NIO from observations of three
ADCP moorings in the continental shelf of the northern
SCS in July 2008 and find that the NIOs are characterizedby red-shifted frequencies.
There are four papers related to the current, upwelling,or water mass in the Taiwan Strait and in the Beibu Gulf.
Hong et al. (2011) analyze the observational data andnumerical model results and confirm the two-pronged
northward flow in the southern Taiwan Strait in summer.
Qiu et al. (2011) analyze the near surface circulation in theTaiwan Strait using 110 satellite-tracked surface drifters
from 1989 to 2007, showing that almost all winter drifters
that enter the Taiwan Strait eventually move southward.
Using a nested circulation model based on the Princeton
Ocean Model, Jiang et al. (2011) investigate the characteristics and mechanisms of the Southwest upwelling and123

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the Taiwan Bank upwelling (Hu et al. 2003) in the southern
Taiwan Strait. Chen et al. (2011b) present the comprehensive analysis of water mass in the eastern Beibu Gulf
after applying the hierarchical clustering method to theobservations of temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen,alkalinity, nitrite, reactive silicate, and chlorophyll a.
Satellite data are applied for the studies on thermalvariability, the shallow water depth retrieval, and thecoastal environment monitoring. Lin et al. (2011) investigate the thermal variability in the SCS and its relationship to
the western Pacific warm pool using long-term sea surface
temperature data derived from satellite and in situ measurements. Fan et al. (2011) develop a method for shallow
water depth retrieval from satellite synthetic aperture radar(SAR) images. Zhao et al. (2011) apply satellite synthetic
aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) for detecting grounddeformation of a large size coastal engineering project, theInternational Airport of Hong Kong.
We believe, therefore, that the special section REO-SCS
serves as a platform for the community to exchange andshare their ideas and results, and plays an important role inpromoting the research of regional environmental oceanography in the SCS.
The editorial work of this special section is supported by theNatural Science Foundation of China through project
40976013 (for Hu), partially by the US National Science
Foundation Program AGS-1061998 (for Zheng), by the direct
grant of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (for Pan), andby Global COE Program from the Japanese Ministry ofEducation, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (forGuo). We, the guest editors of the special section, sincerely
thank the dedicated work of all the reviewers, and appreciate
the extensive and sustained efforts of Profs. Toshiro Saino andToshiyuki Hibiya, Editors-in-Chief of Journal of Oceanography, and Springer Japan. Without their perseverance andguidance, the special section would not be possible.

References
Chen GY, Su F-C, Wang C-M, Liu C-T, Tseng R-S (2011a)
Derivation of internal solitary wave amplitude in the South

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J. Hu et al.
China Sea deep basin from satellite images. J Oceanogr 67(6).
doi:10.1007/s10872-011-0073-9
Chen SL, Li Y, Hu JY, Zheng AR, Huang LF, Lin YS (2011b)
Multiparameter cluster analysis of seasonal variation of watermasses in the eastern Beibu Gulf. J Oceanogr 67(6). doi:10.
1007/s10872-011-0071-y
Fan KG, Huang WG, Lin H, Pan JY, Fu B, Gu YZ (2011) Shallow
water depth retrieval from space-borne SAR imagery. J Oceanogr
67(4):405–413. doi:10.1007/s10872-011-0037-0
Hong HS, Chen C-TA, Jiang YW, Lou J-Y, Chen ZZ, Zhu J (2011)
Source water of two-pronged northward flow in the southern
Taiwan Strait in summer. J Oceanogr 67(4):385–393. doi:10.
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Hu JY, Kawamura H, Hong HS, Pan WR (2003) A review of researchon the upwelling in the Taiwan Strait. Bull Marine Sci 73(3):605–628
Hu JY, Pan JY, Guo XY, Zheng QA (2011) Introduction to the special
section on regional environmental oceanography in the South
China Sea and its adjacent areas (REO-SCS). J Oceanogr67(4):359–363. doi:10.1007/s10872-011-0063-y
Jiang YW, Chai F, Wan ZW, Zhang X, Hong HS (2011) Characteristics and mechanisms of the upwelling in the southern Taiwan
Strait: a three-dimensional numerical model study. J Oceanogr67(6). doi:10.1007/s10872-011-0080-x
Lin C-Y, Ho C-R, Zheng QA, Huang S-J, Kuo N-J (2011) Variabilityof sea surface temperature and warm pool area in the South
China Sea and its relationship to the western Pacific warm pool.
J Oceanogr 67(6). doi:10.1007/s10872-011-0072-x
Qiu Y, Li L, Chen C-TA, Guo XG, Jing CS (2011) Currents in theTaiwan Strait as observed by surface drifters. J Oceanogr
67(4):395–404. doi:10.1007/s10872-011-0033-4
Sun L, Zheng QA, Wang DX, Hu JY, Tai C-K, Sun ZY (2011a) A
case study of near inertial oscillation in the South China Sea
using mooring observations and satellite altimeter data. J Oceanogr 67(6). doi:10.1007/s10872-011-0081-9
Sun ZY, Hu JY, Zheng QA, Li CY (2011b) Strong near-inertial
oscillations in geostrophic shear in the northern South China Sea.
J Oceanogr 67(4):377–384. doi:10.1007/s10872-011-0038-z
Zhao Q, Lin H, Gao W, Zebker HA, Chen A, Yeung K (2011) InSAR
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Zheng QA, Tai C-K, Hu JY, Lin HY, Zhang R-H, Su F-C, Yang XF(2011) Satellite altimeter observations of nonlinear Rossby
eddy–Kuroshio interaction at the Luzon Strait. J Oceanogr67(4):365–376. doi:10.1007/s10872-011-0035-2