Variability of Indian Ocean Sea Surface Temperature and Its Climate Impacts

摘要

Knowledge of the dominant modes of Indian Ocean (IO) SST variability is the most important to understanding and assessing the impacts of air-sea interactions on the evolution and the potential predictability of climate and monsoon in the adjacent region. Using observational data and model sumulations, previous studies confirm that the Arabian Sea is positively correlated with the all-India monsoon rainfall index (Shukla 1975; Shukla and Misra 1977; Shukla and Mooley 1987). And the fluctuations of the Asian monsoon may depend on the air-sea interaction that takes place during the travel of monsoon current over the Indian Ocean including the Arabian Sea, and the Bay of Bengal (e.g., Saha 1970a, 1974; Druyan et al. 1983; Joseph and Pillai 1984; Rao and Goswami 1988; Kershaw 1988; Alapaty et al. 1995). rnRecent studies identified that IO SST has a strong seasonal variability (Wolter and Hastenrath 1989; Krishnamurthy and Kirtman 2003) and its variability is related to ENSO variability (Klein et al. 1999; Krishnarmurthy and Kirtman 2003). Using General Circulation Model (GCM), Shukla and Fennessy (1994) showed that the annual cycle of IO SST is crucially important in establishing the monsoon circulation and rainfall.