On September 16, 2015, an earthquake with magnitude of M_w 8.3 occurred 46 km offshore from Illapel, Chile, generating a 4.4-m local tsunami measured at Coquimbo. In this study, the characteristics of tsunami are presented by a combination of analysis of observations and numerical simulation based on sources of USGS and NOAA. The records of 16 DART buoys in deep water, ten tidal gauges along coasts of near-field, and ten coastal gauges in the far-field are studied by applying Fourier analyses. The numerical simulation based on nonlinear shallow water equations and nested grids is carried out to provide overall tsunami propagation scenarios, and the results match well with the observations in deep water and but not well in coasts closed to the epicenter. Due to the short distance to the epicenter and the shelf resonance of southern Peru and Chile, the maximum amplitude ranged from 0.1 m to 2 m, except for Coquimbo. In deep water, the maximum amplitude of buoys decayed from 9.8 cm to 0.8 cm, suggesting a centimeter-scale Pacific-wide tsunami, while the governing period was 13-17 min and 32 min. Whereas in the far-field coastal region, the tsunami wave amplified to be around 0.2 m to 0.8 m, mostly as a result of run-up effect and resonance from coast reflection. Although the tsunami was relatively moderate in deep water, it still produced non-negligible tsunami hazards in local region and the coasts of far-field.

The acoustic bottom backscattering strength was measured at the frequency range of 6-24 kHz on a typical sandy bottom in the South Yellow Sea by using omnidirectional sources and omnidirectional receiving hydrophones. In the experiment, by avoiding disturbances due to scattering off the sea surface and satisfying the far-field condition, we obtained values of acoustic bottom backscattering strength ranging from -41.1 to -24.4 dB within a grazing angle range of 18°-80°. In the effective range of grazing angles, the acoustic scattering strength generally increases with an increase in the grazing angles, but trends of the variation were distinct in different ranges of frequency, which reflect different scattering mechanisms. The frequency dependence of bottom backscattering strength is generally characterized by a positive correlation in the entire frequency range of 6-24 kHz at the grazing angles of 20°, 40° and 60° with the linear regression slopes of 0.222 9 dB/kHz, 0.513 0 dB/kHzand 0.174 6 dB/kHz, respectively. At the largest grazing angle of 80°, the acoustic backscattering strength exhibits no evident frequency dependence.

Tectonically, the northwestern South China Sea (SCS) is located at the junction between three micro-plates, i.e., the Indochina, South China and Zhongsha-Xisha micro-plates, and involves three basins, i.e., the Yinggehai Basin, the Qiongdongnan Basin and Xisha Trough in the east, and the Zhongjiannan Basin in the south. Since the Pliocene (5.3 Ma), the Yinggehai Basin has experienced repeated accelerating subsidence, high thermal fluid, and widely developing mud-rich overpressure chambers, abundant mud diapers and crust-mantle mixed CO₂. While a large central canyon was developed in the Qiongdongnan Basin, new rift occurred in the Xisha Trough. These characteristics demonstrate a single tectonic unit for the northwestern SCS, for which we have undertaken stress field modeling to understand its plate deformations and sedimentary responses. Our results demonstrate that an extension tectonic event occurred after 5.3 Ma in the Yinggehai-Qiongdongnan-Xisha trough area, which is characterized by thinner crust (<16 000 m), half-graben or graben structural style and thicker sedimentary sequences (>3 500 m). A new rift system subsequently was developed in this area; this event was mainly driven by the combined effects of different movement velocity and direction of the three micro-plates, and the far-field effect of the continental collision between the Indian Plate and the Tibetan Plateau, and subduction of the Pacific Plate underneath the Eurasian Plate.

The systematic discrepancies in both tsunami arrival time and leading negative phase (LNP) were identified for the recent transoceanic tsunami on 16 September 2015 in Illapel, Chile by examining the wave characteristics from the tsunami records at 21 Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (DART) sites and 29 coastal tide gauge stations. The results revealed systematic travel time delay of as much as 22 min (approximately 1.7% of the total travel time) relative to the simulated long waves from the 2015 Chilean tsunami. The delay discrepancy was found to increase with travel time. It was difficult to identify the LNP from the near-shore observation system due to the strong background noise, but the initial negative phase feature became more obvious as the tsunami propagated away from the source area in the deep ocean. We determined that the LNP for the Chilean tsunami had an average duration of 33 min, which was close to the dominant period of the tsunami source. Most of the amplitude ratios to the first elevation phase were approximately 40%, with the largest equivalent to the first positive phase amplitude. We performed numerical analyses by applying the corrected long wave model, which accounted for the effects of seawater density stratification due to compressibility, self-attraction and loading (SAL) of the earth, and wave dispersion compared with observed tsunami waveforms. We attempted to accurately calculate the arrival time and LNP, and to understand how much of a role the physical mechanism played in the discrepancies for the moderate transoceanic tsunami event. The mainly focus of the study is to quantitatively evaluate the contribution of each secondary physical effect to the systematic discrepancies using the corrected shallow water model. Taking all of these effects into consideration, our results demonstrated good agreement between the observed and simulated waveforms. We can conclude that the corrected shallow water model can reduce the tsunami propagation speed and reproduce the LNP, which is observed for tsunamis that have propagated over long distances frequently. The travel time delay between the observed and corrected simulated waveforms is reduced to <8 min and the amplitude discrepancy between them was also markedly diminished. The incorporated effects amounted to approximately 78% of the travel time delay correction, with seawater density stratification, SAL, and Boussinesq dispersion contributing approximately 39%, 21%, and 18%, respectively. The simulated results showed that the elastic loading and Boussinesq dispersion not only affected travel time but also changed the simulated waveforms for this event. In contrast, the seawater stratification only reduced the tsunami speed, whereas the earth’s elasticity loading was responsible for LNP due to the depression of the seafloor surrounding additional tsunami loading at far-field stations. This study revealed that the traditional shallow water model has inherent defects in estimating tsunami arrival, and the leading negative phase of a tsunami is a typical recognizable feature of a moderately strong transoceanic tsunami. These results also support previous theory and can help to explain the observed discrepancies.

It is expounded in this paper that the wind is weak in a zone of large curvature and strong in the small one in case of large scale stream field in the tropics. The relation between the variation of stream fields and generation of cyclones in tropical disturbance are also studied based on the authors another paper.

Polymetalic sulfide is the main product of sea-floor hydrothermal venting, and has become an important sea-floor mineral resources for its rich in many kinds of precious metal elements. Since 2007, a number of investigations have been carried out by the China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association (COMRA ) cruises (CCCs) along the Southwest Indian Ridge (SWIR). In 2011, the COMRA signed an exploration contract of sea-floor polymetallic sulfides of 10 000 km² on the SWIR with the International Seabed Authority. Based on the multibeam data and shipborne gravity data obtained in 2010 by the R/V Dayang Yihao during the leg 6 of CCCs 21, together with the global satellite surveys, the characteristics of gravity anomalies are analyzed in the Duanqiao hydrothermal field (37°39'S, 50°24'E). The “subarea calibration” terrain-correcting method is employed to calculate the Bouguer gravity anomaly, and the ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) profile is used to constrain the two-dimensional gravity anomaly simulation. The absent Moho in a previous seismic model is also calculated. The results show that the crustal thickness varies between 3 and 10 km along the profile, and the maximum crustal thickness reaches up to 10 km in the Duanqiao hydrothermal field with an average of 7.5 km. It is by far the most thicker crust discovered along the SWIR. The calculated crust thickness at the Longqi hydrothermal field is approximately 3 km, 1 km less than that indicated by seismic models, possibly due to the outcome of an oceanic core complex (OCC).

Two kinds of the empirical orthogonal function analysis method for decomposing the mean-field are developed and a comparison is made between them. It is proved that the mean-field can be decomposed using eigenvectors obtained from anomaly-field decomposition, and that more information can be obtained. An example of sea bottom mean temperature analysis shows its remarkable effect in depicting the distribution features of various factors, such as cold water mass, currents and radiation.
A few problems concerning the efficiency of the method are discussed and two matrices of relationship which represent the space-time characteristics of the field are derived. The formulae of space-time transformation are obtained conveniently.

The effects of boundary reflection loss, scattering loss caused by the rough surface and the radiative directivity of the surface sources (parameter m) on the ambient noise field in shallow-water homogeneous layer have been discussed theoretically. It has been found that the parameter m has the stronger controlling role on the behavior of the ambient noise field than others.

The paper studies the short period response of an unbounded and uniform ocean to moving wind field.Firstly, it is shown that the response disturbance has two kinds of motion, one is geostrophical and other is inertial gravity wave.Secondly, this paper studies the disturbance source caused by a circular wind field which moves rapidly in a straight path on a horizontal plane.It is shown that the disturbance source is mainly determined by the distribution of the curl of wind stress.Thirdly, this paper studies the solution of disturbance equation with nonhomogeous term of disturbance source as an impulse.It is shown that the oceanic response is determined by disturbance source.Finally, by calculating numerically the current velocity and surface elevation in time, it is shown that the intensity, spatial scale and duration of the response are closely related to wind field.

A new method for inversion of gravity field using the technique of inverse filtering is presented in this paper to calculate the structure of crust.
After inversing gravity data of West Pacific and Okinawa Trough, it has been proven that the method of inverse filtering has many advantages, such as high accuracy, fast convergence rate, small memory space used and arbitrary reduction of sampling interval. This new method is convenient to minicomputer for solving the inverse problem of crustal structure.