Chapter 11 - Indian Ocean

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean is the smallest of the three major oceans. It differs from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in having no high northern latitudes, extending to only 25°N. The southern boundary of the circulation is the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), within and north of which the Indian Ocean is connected to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Indian Ocean also has an important low latitude connection to the Pacific Ocean through the Indonesian archipelago. In the north, the Indian Ocean has two large embayments west and east of India: the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. The deep Indian Ocean is geographically much more complex than the deep Atlantic and Pacific due to its tectonic history. Many deep ridges divide the deep circulation that is connected with the Southern Ocean into numerous, complicated pathways. The chapter discusses mean wind forcing, monsoonal wind forcing, and buoyancy forcing as they relate to Indian Ocean. Concepts of subtropical gyre, Agulhas current, and Leeuwin current are explained. Indonesian throughflow and Red Sea and Persian Gulf outflows are also described in the chapter.