Sea surface height and mixed layer depth responses to sea surface temperature in northwestern Pacific subtropical front zone from spring to summer

Abstract. Qiu et al. (2014) quantitatively examined the mechanisms of sea surface temperature front disappearance, finding that the formation of shallow mixed layer depth (MLD) is very important. In the present study, we further investigated variations of the sea level anomaly (SLA) and mixed layer depth (MLD) during the SST front weakening period, based on weekly satellite derived products. For the SLA, we examined the steric height component of SLA, using empirical orthogonal function (EOF) method and physical method. The seasonal variations of steric height from above two methods have the same pattern: peak value (~ 20 cm) occurs in July-August, and minimum value (~ −5 cm) occurs in February to March. Correlation between SLA and SST achieves 0.76 in cold zone and frontal zone, and it is 0.86 between steric component and SST. When SST becomes large, MLD decreases gradually. The linear relationship (y = −4.46 x +156.47) between MLD and SST could be used to estimate the MLD in the subtropical front zone.