Water Characteristics And Current Circulations Off East Coast Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract

A descriptive analysis on water characteristics and current circulation at the east coast Peninsular Malaysia was done by using different available sources of data. The main dataset was the in-situ data collection obtained from three different cruises taken in September 2011 (Cruise 1), June 2012 (Cruise 2) and October 2012 (Cruise 3). In –situ CTD parameters of temperature, salinity, density and dissolved oxygen were selected to explain the water characteristics while in-situ ADCP data was used to measure currents at the study area. Because of some limitations in this in-situ data to explain the seasonal variations, satellite tracked drifter data of SVP and assimilated model outputs of BRAN were added to this study. According to the moored ADCP result that was deployed for about 17 hours at the offshore area, the currents behaviour was prominently influenced by diurnal cycles, which is tides. The effect of tides to the currents here were more prominent in the meridional current (v-component) compared to zonal current (u-component). At the same time, the currents also are changing seasonally as observed from SVP and BRAN model outputs. However, CTD data that was taken every two hours within the mooring period did not show any significant diurnal variability in the water properties. The vertical profiles of the snapshots data that were taken in different months also did not show any diurnal changes. The different in vertical profiles was more obvious in between months. BRAN‟s model outputs of temperature and salinity also confirmed that the study area had a prominent seasonal variability of water properties.