A case study of the near-inertial oscillations near the Xisha Islands in the South China Sea during the passage of typhoon Conson 2010

Near-inertial oscillations in the northern South China Sea, close to the Xisha Islands, during the passage of typhoon Conson, were investigated using 52-day observational data and a damped slab model. Using spectral analyses, we found that these near-inertial oscillations were dominated by clockwise components. The observed, as well as simulated, inertial currents matched well before and after the passage of the typhoon, which revealed that significantly enhanced oscillations were induced by the typhoon. They have a peak frequency of 0.0237 cycles per hour, which is 2% lower than the local inertial frequency, meaning a red-shift phenomenon exists, even in shallow water. The red-shift might be attributed to the background negative vorticity. Additionally, we found that the barotropic near-inertial currents were more significant after the passage of the typhoon. The position of the maximum intensity of near-inertial current shear with a period of 20.8 h was found to propagate upward slowly with time before the passage of the typhoon.