
Hui WuEast China Normal University | ECNU · State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research and School of Mathematical Sciences
Hui Wu
PhD
Looking for postdocs collaborators working on ocean dynamics in estuaries and shelf seas.
About
101
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Introduction
Understanding the physical mechanisms in the estuary-shelf sea-open ocean continuum remains a big challenge, although it was first studied in the history of oceanography. New perspectives, methods, and theorems are needed to know this familiar stranger. This is the exact aim of my works. I am a physical oceanographor who also have a joint appointment in applied mathematics. Join my research group (as Ph. D student or Postdoc) if you also have the passion in understanding ocean dynamics.
Additional affiliations
May 2023 - present
Publications
Publications (101)
Coastal current encountering a protruding headland is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Previous studies indicated that the coastal current either moves well around headland or separates offshore, leaving the upstream region unaffected. Yet, these studies often assumed a deep vertical coastal wall, and the coastal current was either of barotropic character...
The Arctic Ocean has experienced significant sea ice loss over recent decades, shifting towards a thinner and more mobile seasonal ice regime. However, the impacts of these transformations on the upper ocean dynamics of the biologically productive Pacific Arctic continental shelves remain underexplored. Here, we quantified the summer upper mixed la...
This study aims to elucidate the environmental changes signified by biogenic components, assess fluctuations in upwelling over the past century, and evaluate the potential risks associated with variations in coastal upwelling intensity on the degradation of fisheries within the Zhoushan Fishing Ground. High-resolution sediment records were establis...
Light is essential for phytoplankton photosynthesis and many other biogeochemical processes in the aquatic system. However, light regimes vary greatly in the estuaries and coasts due to the optical complexity of the Case-2 waters. In this study, observed vertical profiles of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR; 400-700 nm) in a highly turbid m...
Though the Kuroshio intrusion (KI) into the East China Sea (ECS) is relatively weaker during summer, it is of great importance to the ECS shelf ecosystem in this biologically‐active season. The interannual variability of the summer intrusion is less explored as the long‐term observations of the oceanic current are insufficient to draw a complete an...
Cross‐shelf penetrating fronts (CPFs) induce significant cross‐shelf exchange of water properties and nutrients, and thus are important to coastal environments. In this study, the characteristics and mechanisms of realistic large‐scale CPFs in the East China Sea in summer were investigated based on a data assimilative model. The model reproduced CP...
Phytoplankton frequently blooms in estuaries and coastal seas. Numerous dynamic processes affect these regions, generating complex hydrodynamics that induce intense phytoplankton variability over multiple time scales. Especially, the variability over time scales of 10⁰-10¹ days (event-scale) is a strong signal that is fundamental to coastal aquatic...
Phytoplankton distribution in macrotidal estuaries varies strongly due to highly dynamic conditions, contributing to the complexity of aquatic environments and marine ecosystems. Here the Changjiang River Estuary was analyzed as an example to explore this issue, based on field data collected through multiple cruises (including one covering a comple...
Buoyant coastal current induced by riverine outflow often propagates along the coast in the direction of coastal trapped wave. However, it is uncertain how the buoyant coastal current interacts with irregular coastal bathymetry. Measured surface salinity distributions indicate that the buoyant coastal current, which is induced by the Changjiang Riv...
Riverine microplastic (MP) discharge into the ocean contributes greatly to global MP contamination, yet our understanding of this process remains primitive. To deepen our interpretation of the dynamic MP variation throughout the estuarine water columns, we sampled at Xuliujing, the saltwater intrusion node of the Yangtze River Estuary, over the cou...
The response of a wide shelf to subinertial and barotropic offshore pressure signals from the shelf edge was investigated. By relaxing the semigeostrophic approximation, an elliptical wave structure equation was formulated and solved with the integral transform method. It was found that when the imposed offshore signal has an along-shelf length sca...
In the context of global climate change, the frequency of strong wind events are increasing. These extreme events have more significantly altered the marine environment than normal events; however, relevant in-situ measurements are usually lacking for such extreme events. In our previous study, we established a method to estimate particulate organi...
The distribution of the early life stages of Larimichthys polyactis indicates the availability of suitable spawning and nursing grounds and enables a better understanding of the distribution of its geographic subpopulations and isolation. Large‐scale quantitative ichthyoplankton surveys of L. polyactis were performed from March to July 2018, and a...
Advection scheme is one of the core challenges in the computational fluid dynamics, which restricts the capacity of model performance in many research areas including the oceanographic modelling studies. Here in this study, we compared the newly developed algorithm HSIMT (advection scheme with High-order Spatial Interpolation at the Middle Temporal...
As one of the most important coastal currents in the Northeast Pacific marginal seas, the Yellow Sea Coastal Water (YSCW) plays an essential role in modulating regional ocean circulation and the transregional exchange of biogeochemical materials. However, the wintertime transport pattern of the YSCW and its interaction with the Changjiang River Est...
Modulated by a host of complex processes, suspended sediment fronts (SSFs) on the inner shelf of the East China Sea persist strongly and vary notably. Using hourly suspended sediment concentration data collected by the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager over the period 2011–2021, a gradient‐based edge detection algorithm was implemented to extract SS...
Frontal processes play a significant role in estuarine and coastal ecosystem dynamics. In this study, a hydrodynamic model of the Changjiang River plume was developed based on the Regional Ocean Modeling System, and Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) were applied to the model simulations to analyze the horizontal transport characteristics of the...
The coastal region in east China experiences massive anthropogenic eutrophication, and the bottom water off the Changjiang River Estuary in the East China Sea faces the threat of severe seasonal hypoxia. We find that projected future climate changes will work in parallel with anthropogenic eutrophication to exacerbate current hypoxia and increase s...
Small yellow croaker (Larimichthys polyactis), a benthic fish species widely distributed in the Northwest Pacific Ocean, plays an important role in the fishery catch of coastal countries. A large amount of dead small yellow croaker floated on the sea surface near 30.2°N, 125.3°E in the East China Sea on 19 February 2017, and more than 9,000 kilogra...
The buoyant river plume front exhibits substantial variability in the sea surface under energetic external forcing. Although highly dynamic, the river plume is often “rooted” at specific locations through the bottom river plume front. In this study, we addressed this mechanism using the Pearl River plume as an example based on a well-validated nume...
Massive large-scale engineering projects have been built in river estuaries around the world, but their effects on environments in the surrounding coastal waters were less emphasized compared to those due to the watershed projects. In this study, we used the Changjiang River Estuary as an example to show that a significant consequence can be result...
We identify the local, vertical and lateral processes that cause bottom oxygen variation, and characterize timescales for each process using oxygen budget analysis based on a coupled physical‐biogeochemical model for the coastal seas in east China. Local oxygen deficit often occurs in the summer season due to the faster local consumption than the v...
The Changjiang Delta (CD) is one of well-studied large deltas of critical socio-economical and ecological importance regionally and global representativeness. Cumulated field data and numerical modeling has facilitated scientific understanding of its hydro-morphodynamics at multiple spatial and time scales, but the changing boundary forcing conditi...
We present a new extension of the traditional mixing triangle water mass analysis that is adapted for the mixed layer (ML) by including the atmospheric effects as a correction term in the original equations. The ML water mass analysis is then employed to determine the water mass contributions in the Changjiang river plume area based on observed hyd...
Riverine and oceanic nutrients co-influence the estuarine and coastal phytoplankton production and subsequent organic carbon (OC) dynamics, which contribute significantly to the global carbon cycle. However, it is difficult to quantify the contributions of nutrients from different sources. Based on in situ observations made in July 2017, a three en...
Coastal beaches are a vital transitional zone in which terrestrial microplastics (MPs) enter the oceans. However, little is known about the impact of coastal currents on the dispersion and accumulation of MPs, especially in semi-enclosed bays. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated the spatiotemporal variation of MPs in the coastal sediment...
East Asian Marginal Seas are a continuum receiving multiple large rivers including the Changjiang, the Yellow, and the Pearl Rivers. Fates of these river discharges are strongly influenced by the energetic shelf circulation system. Meanwhile, the massive freshwater discharge from these rivers also modulate the density structure and dynamic height o...
In this study, we improve the representation of global river runoff in the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean Version 4 (ECCOv4) framework, allowing for a more realistic treatment of coastal plume dynamics. We use a suite of experiments to explore the sensitivity of coastal plume regions to runoff forcing, model grid resolution, an...
Pressure anomaly set by the open ocean affects the dynamic topography and associated circulation over the continental shelf, which is explored here on a linearized β-plane arrested topographic wave framework that considers the variation in Coriolis parameter with latitude. It was found that on a meridional shelf, a nondimensional parameter Pe_β, te...
In recent years, advances have been made toward understanding the oceanic circulation dynamics in the Taiwan and Tsushima straits, as well as over the central shelf of East China Sea (ECS) and southern Yellow Sea. ECS shelf circulation between the 50 m and 100 m isobaths is attributed to the confluences of the northeastward Taiwan Strait Current (T...
This paper reviews recent advances in the circulation dynamics of the Kuroshio and its interaction with shelf currents in the East China Sea (ECS). The annually averaged Kuroshio volume transport varies between 19 and 24 Sv, based on different observations, but there is no consensus on which season its volume transport peaks. The Kuroshio is intens...
Advances on the circulation in the Changjiang Estuary and adjacent East China Sea (ECS) and Yellow Sea (YS) coastal waters in the recent decades (2000–2020) are synthesized in this review. The circulation over the complicated bathymetry in the region is locally driven by winds, tides, as well as riverine discharge, and is remotely influenced by she...
The formation and maintenance of low oxygen offshore of the Changjiang River Estuary have occurred with high frequency in certain regions, which are defined as bottom hypoxia hotspots. The two major hotspots are the southern shallow bank (Yangtze Bank) and the submarine canyon. For this study, a high resolution ecosystem model was used to simulate...
Estuarine saltwater intrusions are mainly controlled by river discharge and tides. Unexpectedly, an extremely severe saltwater intrusion event occurred in February 2014 in the Changjiang estuary under normal river discharge conditions. This intrusion cut off the freshwater input for 23 d into the Qingcaosha reservoir, which is the largest estuarine...
In this study, we improve the representation of global river runoff in the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) framework, allowing for a more realistic treatment of coastal plume dynamics. We use a suite of experiments to explore the sensitivity of coastal plume regions to runoff forcing, model grid resolution, and grid type....
A new technique involving large-volume (10 m3) samples of seawater was used to determine the abundance of microplastics (MPs) in the water column in the West Pacific Ocean and East Indian Ocean. Compared to the conventional sampling methods based on smaller volumes of water, the new data yielded abundance values for the deep-water column that are 1...
The ocean response to typhoon is usually characterized by a cooling on the sea surface. In August 2012, however, a warming (instead of cooling) event occurs in the Yellow Sea outside Mokpo, South Korea, as the typhoon Bolaven (2012) passes. This study gives a report of this abnormal sea surface warming, and provides an exploration of the underlying...
Estuarine fronts are the boundaries between different water masses at river mouths and play important roles in trapping suspended particles. Investigating the response of estuarine fronts to climate and sea-level changes during the Holocene could elucidate the evolution of complex hydro- and sediment-dynamic processes at river mouths. To assess the...
Estuarine saltwater intrusion is mainly controlled by river discharge and tide. Unexpectedly, an extremely severe saltwater intrusion event in February 2014 occurred in the Changjiang Estuary under normal river discharge conditions. It cut off the freshwater input for 23 days into the Qingcaosha Reservoir, which is the largest estuarine reservoir i...
Stratification has been proved to be essential to the development and sustainment of bottom hypoxia off the Texas-Louisiana shelf. Observations indicate that bottom hypoxia does not always arise under strong stratification, especially in spring/winter season when the strong stratification is transient. A simple oxygen model is coupled with a high-r...
Based on a newly developed observational dataset and a suite of climate model simulations, we evaluate changes in summer mean wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) in China from 1961 through 2080. We show that summer mean WBGT has increased almost everywhere across China since 1961 due to human-induced climate change. Consequently, hot summers as measu...
The response of a coastal region to sea-level rise depends on the local physical features, which should therefore be evaluated locally to provide an accurate vulnerability assessment. In this study, we conducted comprehensive analyses of the potential impacts of sea-level rise on the Pearl River Estuary (PRE), China with the aid of a fully calibrat...
Large areas of seasonal hypoxia have been detected off the Changjiang River Estuary over the last decade. Although seasonal bottom hypoxia was transient due to complex dynamical processes, it occurred with high frequency in certain regions. Summer hypoxia hot spots off the estuary were first identified using a comprehensive, high‐resolution ecosyst...
The geographical distribution of dinoflagellate cysts was investigated in palynologically treated surface sediments from the South China Sea (SCS) to understand the driving environmental factors associated with specific taxa. The western SCS generally has higher total cyst concentrations (>300 cysts g⁻¹) than the eastern region (<200 cysts g⁻¹). Th...
The occurrence of phytoplankton blooms in estuarine and coastal waters is codetermined by the export of fluvial nutrients and other water properties such as turbidity. In this study, the Changjiang River Estuary was used as an example to investigate the intrinsic link between river plume dynamics, riverine nutrient loading, suspended sediment conce...
Straits are both a choke point and passage through which material and energy are exchanged between two adjoining water bodies. Understanding the mechanisms that drive these exchanges therefore is vital to quantifying the water and sediment budgets in regional and global oceans. Here we present a study in which a novel, phase‐averaging method was em...
The numerical simulation of estuarine dynamics requires accurate prediction for the transport of tracers, such as temperature and salinity. During the simulation of these processes, all the numerical models introduce two kinds of tracer mixing: 1) by parameterizing the tracer eddy diffusivity through turbulence models leading to a source of physica...
Fine-grained sediments suspended in coastal waters play an important role in submarine topography evolution and associated environment changes. The convergence of suspended sediments concentrated near the seabed results in high sediment concentration, and contributes significantly to sediment transport. In order to investigate the mechanism trigger...
The Changjiang River discharges huge amounts of nutrients, which cause frequent harmful algal blooms off its estuary. By analyzing historical and in situ observational data, this study aimed to determine the distribution and physical controls of these blooms. The results indicated that phytoplankton bloomed within the 30–50 m isobaths south of the...
Typhoons (or hurricanes) are the most energetic atmospheric forcing acting on coastal waters. Here in this study, we investigated the response of the summertime Changjiang River plume to a typical typhoon, Chan‐hom (1509), with a combination of field observation and numerical simulation. Surface wave‐induced mixing was considered in the model confi...
Observed oxygen concentrations collected at discrete locations during research cruises were conventionally used to estimate spatial extents of bottom low-oxygen/hypoxia. Yet observed oxygen concentrations were often not quantitatively representative of spatial patterns in instantaneous oxygen concentrations in coastal oceans, especially when the bo...
An important hydrographic phenomenon in Yellow Sea is the surface cold patches (SCP) in warm seasons, among which the most conspicuous are the Shandong SCP, Subei SCP, and Mokpo SCP. Previous studies based on monthly mean fields propose that these patches result from the collaboration of tidal mixing and tidal induced upwelling. While this is true...
Conventional wisdoms on river plume dynamics suggest that a down‐shelf buoyant coastal current will ultimately be trapped at a specific depth, i.e., the trapping depth, as constrained by riverine outflow and offshore bottom Ekman transport. Theoretically, a prerequisite down‐shelf current is necessary to form a stable bottom‐trapped river plume. In...
The Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) plays an important role in ocean circulation and global climate change. Near the equator, as the Coriolis parameter goes to 0, equatorial currents cannot be described by geostrophy in which the pressure gradient force term is balanced by the Coriolis force term. Many previous studies focus on the relationships betw...
Both magnetic properties and radionuclides are widely used to trace sediment transport in aquatic environments; however, these methods have not been used in combination. In this study, the East China Sea (ECS), a typical river-dominated margin, was chosen to demonstrate the advantages of combining these two methods to track sediment movements on a...
Mega constructions have been built in many river estuaries, but their environmental consequences in the adjacent coastal oceans are not well understood. This issue was addressed with an example of the Changjiang River Estuary, where massive navigation and reclamation constructions were recently built on the tidal flats that separate the three major...
In the southwestern Yellow Sea there is a low-salinity and turbid coastal water, the Subei Coastal Water (SCW). The origins of freshwater contents and thus the dissolved terrigenous nutrients in the SCW have been debated for decades. In this study, we used a well-validated numerical model to quantify the contributions of multiple rivers, i.e., the...
Globally mud areas on continental shelves are conduits for the dispersal of uvial-sourced sediment. We
address fundamental issues in sediment dynamics focusing on how mud is retained on the seabed on shallow inner shelves and what are the sources of mud. Through a process-based comprehensive study that integrates dynamics, provenance, and sedimento...