ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Coastal Ocean Processes
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1680577
This article is part of the Research TopicApplication of Remote Sensing in Coastal Oceanic Processes Volume IIView all 8 articles
Characteristics and mechanisms of summer subsurface marine heatwaves in the East/Japan Sea
Provisionally accepted
- 1Zhejiang Tongji Vocational College of Science and Technology, Hangzhou, China
- 2Second Institute of Oceanography Ministry of Natural Resources, Hangzhou, China
- 3State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Hangzhou, China
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This study investigated the summer subsurface marine heatwaves (SSMHWs) in the East/Japan Sea (EJS) using the Japan Coastal Ocean Predictability Experiment 2 ocean reanalysis datasets during 1993–2023. Climatologically, the cumulative (maximum) intensity area-averaged over the EJS ranges from 20°C days (2.5°C) at surface to its maximum of 36°C days (4°C) at approximately 70 m, confirming significant subsurface intensification of summer MHWs. Compared with the almost uniform spatial patterns at surface, the intensities of MHWs at subsurface layers show substantial spatial variations. The SSMHWs in the EJS are caused not by surface atmospheric forcings, but primarily by internal oceanic processes. During summer, the strong stratification in the EJS inhibits the vertical mixing and traps more heat fluxes at surface. As the main heat sources of the upper ocean, the Tsushima Warm Current (TWC) plays a crucial role in triggering SSMHWs in the EJS. Anomalous increased volume transport of TWC carries more warm water into the EJS, favoring the basin-scale intense SSMHWs. This warm water is redistributed by the East Korean Warm Current and mesoscale eddies, leading to regional features of SSMHWs in the EJS. Our results highlighted the roles of oceanic circulation in forming intense SSMHWs in the EJS.
Keywords: Subsurface Marine heatwave, East/Japan Sea, Tsushima warm current, EastKorea Warm Current, mesoscale eddy
Received: 06 Aug 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 LI, Cui, Wu, Liu, Ren, Xu, Long and ZHU. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: XIAO-HUA ZHU, xhzhu@sio.org.cn
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