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Detection of Intraseasonal Oscillations in SMAP Salinity in the Bay of Bengal
Author(s) -
Subrahmanyam Bulusu,
Trott Corinne B.,
Murty V. S. N.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2018gl078662
Subject(s) - sss* , bay , environmental science , climatology , anomaly (physics) , monsoon , salinity , precipitation , flux (metallurgy) , amplitude , sea surface temperature , atmospheric sciences , bengal , meteorology , geology , oceanography , physics , mathematical optimization , materials science , mathematics , quantum mechanics , metallurgy , condensed matter physics
Analysis of Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission derived sea surface salinity (SSS) during April 2015 to December 2017 in the Bay of Bengal (BoB) shows first revelation of new insight of existence of 30‐ to 90‐day and 10‐ to 20‐day period Intraseasonal Oscillations (ISOs) in SSS—all phase‐locked during August–December. The seasonal SMAP SSS anomaly (SSSA) minimum (−0.5 to −1.0 practical salinity unit, psu) occurs in October and exhibits year‐to‐year variation, while SSSA maximum (0.5 psu) occurs in June during 2015–2017. Interestingly, these ISOs encompass the negative phase of seasonal SSSA minimum (August–December) in a year and are related to seasonal variations in river discharge and surface freshwater flux (precipitation and evaporation), that in turn are impacted by the climatic events. Wavelet analysis reveals larger amplitude (−0.2 to 0.35 psu) 30‐ to 90‐day ISO in northern BoB during August–November. The northward propagation of the SSS ISOs would modulate the postmonsoon air‐sea interactions across the BoB.