scholarly journals Ocean Surface Impacts on the Seasonal-Mean Precipitation over the Tropical Indian Ocean

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (10) ◽  
pp. 3566-3582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingyue Chen ◽  
Wanqiu Wang ◽  
Arun Kumar ◽  
Hui Wang ◽  
Bhaskar Jha

Abstract This study analyzes factors affecting the predictability of seasonal-mean precipitation over the tropical Indian Ocean. The analysis focuses on the contributions from the local sea surface temperature (SST) forcing in the Indian Ocean, the remote SST forcing related to ENSO in the tropical eastern Pacific, and the role of local air–sea coupling. To understand the impacts of the individual factors, the prediction skill over the tropical Indian Ocean for four model simulations, but with different treatments for the ocean, are compared. The seasonality in precipitation skill, the local precipitation–SST relationship, and prediction skill related to Indian Ocean dipole mode (IODM) are examined. It is found that the importance of the accuracy of local SST and the presence of local air–sea coupling in the Indian Ocean has a strong seasonal dependence. Accurate local SSTs are important during the boreal fall season, whereas the local air–sea coupling is important during the boreal spring. The precipitation skill over the Indian Ocean during boreal winter is primarily from ENSO. However, ENSO impacts are better realized with the inclusion of an interactive ocean. For all four seasons, the simulation without the interannual variations of local SST in the Indian Ocean shows the least precipitation skill and a much weaker seasonality. It is also found that, for the simulation where the global SSTs are relaxed to the observations and hence maintain some level of active air–sea coupling, the observed seasonal cycle of precipitation–SST relationship is reproduced reasonably well. In addition, the analysis also shows that simulations with accurate SST forcing display high precipitation skill during strong IODM events, indicating that IODM SST acts as a forcing for the atmospheric variability.

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (16) ◽  
pp. 11973-11990 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Fiehn ◽  
Birgit Quack ◽  
Irene Stemmler ◽  
Franziska Ziska ◽  
Kirstin Krüger

Abstract. Oceanic very short-lived substances (VSLSs), such as bromoform (CHBr3), contribute to stratospheric halogen loading and, thus, to ozone depletion. However, the amount, timing, and region of bromine delivery to the stratosphere through one of the main entrance gates, the Indian summer monsoon circulation, are still uncertain. In this study, we created two bromoform emission inventories with monthly resolution for the tropical Indian Ocean and west Pacific based on new in situ bromoform measurements and novel ocean biogeochemistry modeling. The mass transport and atmospheric mixing ratios of bromoform were modeled for the year 2014 with the particle dispersion model FLEXPART driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis. We compare results between two emission scenarios: (1) monthly averaged and (2) annually averaged emissions. Both simulations reproduce the atmospheric distribution of bromoform from ship- and aircraft-based observations in the boundary layer and upper troposphere above the Indian Ocean reasonably well. Using monthly resolved emissions, the main oceanic source regions for the stratosphere include the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal in boreal summer and the tropical west Pacific Ocean in boreal winter. The main stratospheric injection in boreal summer occurs over the southern tip of India associated with the high local oceanic sources and strong convection of the summer monsoon. In boreal winter more bromoform is entrained over the west Pacific than over the Indian Ocean. The annually averaged stratospheric injection of bromoform is in the same range whether using monthly averaged or annually averaged emissions in our Lagrangian calculations. However, monthly averaged emissions result in the highest mixing ratios within the Asian monsoon anticyclone in boreal summer and above the central Indian Ocean in boreal winter, while annually averaged emissions display a maximum above the west Indian Ocean in boreal spring. In the Asian summer monsoon anticyclone bromoform atmospheric mixing ratios vary by up to 50 % between using monthly averaged and annually averaged oceanic emissions. Our results underline that the seasonal and regional stratospheric bromine injection from the tropical Indian Ocean and west Pacific critically depend on the seasonality and spatial distribution of the VSLS emissions.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Adnan Abid ◽  
Fred Kucharski ◽  
Franco Molteni ◽  
In-Sik Kang ◽  
Adrian Tompkins ◽  
...  

<p>El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) have a weak influence on the seasonal mean Euro-Atlantic circulation anomalies during the boreal winter (Dec-Feb) season. Therefore, monthly ENSO teleconnections to Euro-Atlantic region were studied during the boreal winter season for the period 1981-2015 using reanalysis and hindcast dataset. It is shown that the ENSO-forced signal to the Euro-Atlantic circulation anomalies does not persist throughout the boreal winter season. During earlier winter, a positive ENSO phase strongly enforces rainfall dipole anomalies in the tropical Indian Ocean, with increased rainfall over the western tropical Indian Ocean, and reduced in the eastern tropical Indian ocean.  This Indian Ocean rainfall dipole weakens in late winter. During early winter, the Indian Ocean rainfall dipole modifies the subtropical South Asian jet (SAJET) which forces a wavenumber-3 response projecting spatially onto the positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) pattern. On contrary, during late winter, the response in the Euro-Atlantic sector is dominated by the well-known ENSO wavetrain from the tropical Pacific region, involving Pacific North American (PNA) pattern anomalies that project spatially on the negative phase of the NAO. Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM) numerical experiments forced with an Indian Ocean heating dipole anomaly support the hypothesis that the Indian Ocean modulates the SAJET that enforces the Rossby wave propagation to the Euro-Atlantic region in early winter. Moreover, the ECMWF-SEAS5 hindcast dataset reproduces the observed ENSO-forced inter-basin tropical teleconnections transition from early to late winter and their response to the Euro-Atlantic circulation anomalies quite well. Therefore, it is important to understand the tropical inter-basin transition, which may lead to improve the sub-seasonal to seasonal variability and predictability of the Euro-Atlantic circulation anomalies. </p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 695-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Du ◽  
Yuhong Zhang

Abstract This study investigates sea surface salinity (SSS) variations in the tropical Indian Ocean (IO) using the Aquarius/Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-D (SAC-D) and the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite data and the Argo observations during July 2010–July 2014. Compared to the Argo observations, the satellite datasets generally provide SSS maps with higher space–time resolution, particularly in the regions where Argo floats are sparse. Both Aquarius and SMOS well captured the SSS variations associated with the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) mode. Significant SSS changes occurred in the central equatorial IO, along the Java–Sumatra coast, and south of the equatorial IO, due to ocean circulation variations. During the negative IOD events in 2010, 2013, and 2014, westerly wind anomalies strengthened along the equator, weakening coastal upwelling off Java and Sumatra and decreasing SSS. South of the equatorial IO, an anomalous cyclonic gyre changed the tropical circulation, which favored the eastward high-salinity tongue along the equator and the westward low-saline tongue in the south. An upwelling Rossby wave favored the increase of SSS farther to the south. During the positive IOD events in 2011 and 2012, the above-mentioned processes reversed, although the decrease of SSS was weaker in magnitude.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Fiehn ◽  
Birgit Quack ◽  
Irene Stemmler ◽  
Franziska Ziska ◽  
Kirstin Krüger

Abstract. Oceanic very short-lived substances (VSLS), such as bromoform (CHBr3), contribute to stratospheric halogen loading and, thus, to ozone depletion. However, the amount, timing, and region of bromine delivery to the stratosphere through one of the main entrance gates, the Asian monsoon circulation, are still uncertain. In this study, we created two bromoform emission inventories with monthly resolution for the tropical Indian Ocean and west Pacific based on new in situ bromoform measurements and novel ocean biogeochemistry modeling. The mass transport and atmospheric mixing ratios of bromoform were modeled for the year 2014 with the particle dispersion model FLEXPART driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis. We compare results between two emission scenarios: (1) monthly and (2) annually averaged emissions. Both simulations reproduce the atmospheric distribution of bromoform from ship- and aircraft-based observations in the boundary layer and upper troposphere above the Indian Ocean well. Using monthly resolved emissions, main oceanic source regions for the stratosphere include the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal in boreal summer and the tropical west Pacific Ocean in boreal winter. The main stratospheric entrainment in boreal summer occurs over the southern tip of India associated with the high local oceanic sources and strong convection of the summer monsoon. In boreal winter more bromoform is entrained over the west Pacific than over the Indian Ocean. The annually averaged stratospheric entrainment of bromoform is in the same range whether using monthly or annually averaged emissions in our Lagrangian calculations. However, monthly averaged emissions result in highest mixing ratios within the Asian monsoon anticyclone in boreal summer and above the central Indian Ocean in boreal winter, while annually averaged emissions display a maximum above the west Indian Ocean in boreal spring. In the Asian summer monsoon anticyclone bromoform atmospheric mixing ratios vary up to 50 % between using monthly and annually averaged oceanic emissions. Our results underline that the seasonal and regional stratospheric bromine entrainment from the tropical Indian Ocean and west Pacific critically depends on the seasonality and spatial distribution of the VSLS emissions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (19) ◽  
pp. 7953-7970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takeshi Doi ◽  
Andrea Storto ◽  
Swadhin K. Behera ◽  
Antonio Navarra ◽  
Toshio Yamagata

Abstract The numerical seasonal prediction system using the Scale Interaction Experiment–Frontier version 1 (SINTEX-F) ocean–atmosphere coupled model has so far demonstrated a good performance for prediction of the Indian Ocean dipole mode (IOD) despite the fact that the system adopts a relatively simple initialization scheme based on nudging only the sea surface temperature (SST). However, it is to be expected that the system is not sufficient to capture in detail the subsurface oceanic precondition. Therefore, the authors have introduced a new three-dimensional variational ocean data assimilation (3DVAR) method that takes three-dimensional observed ocean temperature and salinity into account. Since the new system has successfully improved IOD predictions, the present study is showing that the ocean observational efforts in the tropical Indian Ocean are decisive for improvement of the IOD predictions and may have a large impact on important socioeconomic activities, particularly in the Indian Ocean rim countries.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (13) ◽  
pp. 3720-3738 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuanglin Li ◽  
Judith Perlwitz ◽  
Martin P. Hoerling ◽  
Xiaoting Chen

Abstract Atmospheric circulation changes during boreal winter of the second half of the twentieth century exhibit a trend toward the positive polarity of both the Northern Hemisphere annular mode (NAM) and the Southern Hemisphere annular mode (SAM). This has occurred in concert with other trends in the climate system, most notably a warming of the Indian Ocean. This study explores whether the tropical Indian Ocean warming played a role in forcing these annular trends. Five different atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) are forced with an idealized, transient warming of Indian Ocean sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA); the results of this indicate that the warming contributed to the annular trend in the NH but offset the annular trend in SH. The latter result implies that the Indian Ocean warming may have partly cancelled the influence of the stratospheric ozone depletion over the southern polar area, which itself forced a trend toward the positive phase of the SAM. Diagnosis of the physical mechanisms for the annular responses indicates that the direct impact of the diabatic heating induced by the Indian Ocean warming does not account for the annular response in the extratropics. Instead, interactions between the forced stationary wave anomalies and transient eddies is key for the formation of annular structures.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
In-Won Kim ◽  
Malte Stuecker ◽  
Axel Timmermann ◽  
Jong-Seong Kug ◽  
So-Won Park ◽  
...  

Abstract Mechanisms by which tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures influence vegetation in Eastern Africa and which role drought-induced fires play have not been fully explored. Here, we use a suite of idealized Earth system model simulations to elucidate the governing processes for eastern African interannual vegetation changes. Our analysis focuses on Tanzania. In the absence of ENSO-induced sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the Tropical Indian Ocean (TIO), El Niño causes during its peak phase negative precipitation anomalies over Tanzania due to a weakening of the tropical-wide Walker circulation and anomalous descending motion over the Indian Ocean and southeastern Africa. Resulting drought conditions increase the occurrence of wildfires, which leads to a marked decrease in vegetation cover. Subsequent wetter La Niña conditions in boreal winter reverse the trend in vegetation, causing a gradual 1-year-long recovery phase. The 2-year-long vegetation response in Tanzania can be explained as a double-integration of the local rainfall anomalies, which originate from the seasonally-modulated ENSO Pacific-SST forcing (Combination mode). In the presence of interannual TIO SST forcing, the southeast African precipitation and vegetation responses to ENSO are muted due to Indian Ocean warming and the resulting anomalous upward motion in the atmosphere.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
In-Won Kim ◽  
Malte F. Stuecker ◽  
Axel Timmermann ◽  
Elke Zeller ◽  
Jong-Seong Kug ◽  
...  

AbstractMechanisms by which tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures (SST) influence vegetation in eastern Africa have not been fully explored. Here, we use a suite of idealized Earth system model simulations to elucidate the governing processes for eastern African interannual vegetation changes. Our analysis focuses on Tanzania. In the absence of ENSO-induced sea surface temperature anomalies in the Tropical Indian Ocean (TIO), El Niño causes during its peak phase negative precipitation anomalies over Tanzania due to a weakening of the tropical-wide Walker circulation and anomalous descending motion over the Indian Ocean and southeastern Africa. Resulting drought conditions increase the occurrence of wildfires, which leads to a marked decrease in vegetation cover. Subsequent wetter La Niña conditions in boreal winter reverse the phase in vegetation anomalies, causing a gradual 1-year-long recovery phase. The 2-year-long vegetation decline in Tanzania during an ENSO cycle can be explained as a double-integration of the local rainfall anomalies, which originate from the seasonally-modulated ENSO Pacific-SST forcing (Combination mode). In the presence of interannual TIO SST forcing, the southeast African precipitation and vegetation responses to ENSO are muted due to Indian Ocean warming and the resulting anomalous upward motion in the atmosphere.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qing-Gang Gao ◽  
Vonevilay Sombutmounvong ◽  
Lihua Xiong ◽  
Joo-Heon Lee ◽  
Jong-Suk Kim

In this study, we investigated extreme droughts in the Indochina peninsula and their relationship with the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) mode. Areas most vulnerable to drought were analyzed via statistical simulations of the IOD based on historical observations. Results of the long-term trend analysis indicate that areas with increasing spring (March–May) rainfall are mainly distributed along the eastern coast (Vietnam) and the northwestern portions of the Indochina Peninsula (ICP), while Central and Northern Laos and Northern Cambodia have witnessed a reduction in spring rainfall over the past few decades. This trend is similar to that of extreme drought. During positive IOD years, the frequency of extreme droughts was reduced throughout Vietnam and in the southwestern parts of China, while increased drought was observed in Cambodia, Central Laos, and along the coastline adjacent to the Myanmar Sea. Results for negative IOD years were similar to changes observed for positive IOD years; however, the eastern and northern parts of the ICP experienced reduced droughts. In addition, the results of the statistical simulations proposed in this study successfully simulate drought-sensitive areas and evolution patterns of various IOD changes. The results of this study can help improve diagnostic techniques for extreme droughts in the ICP.


2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (17) ◽  
pp. 3428-3449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert S. Fischer ◽  
Pascal Terray ◽  
Eric Guilyardi ◽  
Silvio Gualdi ◽  
Pascale Delecluse

Abstract The question of whether and how tropical Indian Ocean dipole or zonal mode (IOZM) interannual variability is independent of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability in the Pacific is addressed in a comparison of twin 200-yr runs of a coupled climate model. The first is a reference simulation, and the second has ENSO-scale variability suppressed with a constraint on the tropical Pacific wind stress. The IOZM can exist in the model without ENSO, and the composite evolution of the main anomalies in the Indian Ocean in the two simulations is virtually identical. Its growth depends on a positive feedback between anomalous equatorial easterly winds, upwelling equatorial and coastal Kelvin waves reducing the thermocline depth and sea surface temperature off the coast of Sumatra, and the atmospheric dynamical response to the subsequently reduced convection. Two IOZM triggers in the boreal spring are found. The first is an anomalous Hadley circulation over the eastern tropical Indian Ocean and Maritime Continent, with an early northward penetration of the Southern Hemisphere southeasterly trades. This situation grows out of cooler sea surface temperatures in the southeastern tropical Indian Ocean left behind by a reinforcement of the late austral summer winds. The second trigger is a consequence of a zonal shift in the center of convection associated with a developing El Niño, a Walker cell anomaly. The first trigger is the only one present in the constrained simulation and is similar to the evolution of anomalies in 1994, when the IOZM occurred in the absence of a Pacific El Niño state. The presence of these two triggers—the first independent of ENSO and the second phase locking the IOZM to El Niño—allows an understanding of both the existence of IOZM events when Pacific conditions are neutral and the significant correlation between the IOZM and El Niño.


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