Water and Salt Transports in the Hengsha Channel of Changjiang Estuary

In a multilevel bifurcated estuary, the channels between the bifurcated branches play important roles in the exchanges of water and salt. In the Changjiang Estuary, the Hengsha Channel (HC) connects the North Channel (NC) and the North Passage (NP). In this paper, based on a two-way nesting unstructured quadrilateral grid, finite-differencing, three-dimensional estuarine and coastal ocean model, the tidal and seasonal variations in the water and salt transports in the HC were simulated, and their dynamic mechanism was analyzed. The residual water and salt transports in the HC both flow southward from the NC to the NP. In wet season, the residual water transport in the HC is 677 m³/s during neap tide and 245 m³/s during spring tide, and the residual salt transport is 0. In dry season, the residual water and salt transports in the HC are 1278 m³/s and 0.38 t/s during neap tide, respectively, and 1328 m³/s and 12.61 t/s during spring tide. Affected by the northerly wind and the southeastward baroclinic gradient force, the water and salt fluxes in dry season are much larger than those in wet season. The dynamic mechanism responsible for the water transport in the HC was numerically simulated and analyzed.