Influence of seasonal monsoons on net community production and CO₂ in subtropical Hong Kong coastal waters

Abstract. Data from seven cruises in three different environments including the Pearl River estuary, sewage discharge outfall and eastern coastal/shelf waters, were used to examine the seasonal variations in net primary production (NPP) and the biologically active gases O2 and CO2. In the winter dry season, when monsoon-induced downwelling was dominant, NPP was low (−60±50 mmol C m−2 d−1) in all three regions. The negative NPP corresponded to low O2 influxes (−100±50 mmol O2 m−2 d−1) and CO2 effluxes (24±10 mmol C m−2 d−1). In the summer wet season, when upwelling brought the bottom oceanic waters to the nearshore due to the southwest monsoonal wind, there was a 2 to 15-fold increase in integrated primary production (IPP) compared to winter. The increase in IPP was likely due to the favorable conditions such as stratification and the nutrient inputs from upwelled waters and the Pearl River estuary. NPP reached up to 240±100 mmol C m−2 d−1 in the wet season. However, accompanying the high positive NPP, we observed an influx of O2 (−100±60 mmol O2 m−2 d−1) and efflux of CO2 (25±15 mmol C m−2 d−1). The high positive NPP corresponding to a CO2 source and O2 sink could be explained by the influence of the southwest monsoon-induced upwelling, as the upwelling brought cold, low DO (160±30 μM) and high DIC (1960±100 μatm) water to the surface in the wet season. Hence, the subtropical Hong Kong coastal waters are generally a CO2 source due to the monsoonal influence in both the dry and wet seasons.

Abstract. A typhoon struck the Pearl River Estuary in September 1874 (“Typhoon 1874”), causing extensive damage and claiming thousands of lives in the region during its passage. Like many other historical typhoons, the deadliest impact of the typhoon was its associated storm surge. In this paper, a possible track of the typhoon was reconstructed through an analysis of the historical qualitative and quantitative weather observations in the Philippines, the northern part of the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Macao, and Guangdong recorded in various historical documents. The magnitudes of the associated storm surges and storm tides in Hong Kong and Macao were also quantitatively estimated using storm surge model and analogue astronomical tides based on the reconstructed track. The results indicated that the typhoon could have crossed the Luzon Strait from the western North Pacific and moved across the northeastern part of the South China Sea to strike the Pearl River Estuary more or less as a super typhoon in the early morning on 23 September 1874. The typhoon passed about 60 km south–southwest of Hong Kong and made landfall in Macao, bringing maximum storm tides of around 4.9 m above the Hong Kong Chart Datum (http://www.geodetic.gov.hk/smo/gsi/Data/pdf/explanatorynotes.pdf, last access: 3 January 2020) at the Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong and around 5.4 m above the Macao Chart Datum (https://mosref.dscc.gov.mo/Help/ref/Macaucoord_2009_web_EN_v201702.pdf, last access: 3 January 2020) at Porto Interior (inner harbour) in Macao. Both the maximum storm tide (4.88 m above the Hong Kong Chart Datum) and maximum storm surge (2.83 m) brought by Typhoon 1874 at the Victoria Harbour estimated in this study are higher than all the existing records since the establishment of the Hong Kong Observatory in 1883, including the recent records set by super typhoon Mangkhut on 16 September 2018.