Behavior of biological disturbance on the Yellow Sea using Lagrangian Particle Tracking method

Abstract:

Climate change affects marine ecosystem in many different ways, especially for abundance of biological disturbances. The rhizostome jellyfish Nemopilema nomurai (or N. nomurai) has been identified as one of biological disturbances around the Korean Peninsula since 2009. In order to understand how the N. nomura migrates toward the Korean coasts, the temporal change in its distribution and abundance was analyzed using both the Lagrangian Particle Tracking method (hereafter LPT method) and velocity fields from observed data. The Sea Surface Height (SSH) altimetry data derived from AVISO and wind velocity from ECMWF reanalysis data are employed for the LPT, enabling us to track N. nomurai.

 Our simulation results show that the wind is most dominant forcing in N. nomurai’s movements. It moves northeastward from the East China Sea to the Korean Peninsula in summer and moves westward in winter in response to the seasonal wind direction. Our results based on LPT are well agree with in situ measurements of appearance of N. nomurai around the Korean Peninsula.