Inter-annual and Decadal Variability of Sea Surface Temperature over Bay of Bengal

Abstract

Sea surface temperature (SST) is one of the important oceanic parameters controlling the ocean climate. In view of this importance, an attempt was made in this study to examine the inter-annual and decadal variability of SST over the Bay of Bengal. The Bay is divided into three regions namely, i) South Bay, ii) Central Bay and iii) North Bay , during the period 1979-2006. The values of seasonal SST anomaly over these regions of Bay of Bengal are computed for the four meteorological seasons like, Winter (December-February), pre-monsoon (March-May), Monsoon (June-September) and post-monsoon (October-November). The variability of seasonal SST anomaly was examined using various statistical methods, on inter-annual and decadal time scale and the results are inter-compared. The SST anomaly over the above region of Bay of Bengal for all seasons showed an increasing trend except in the North Bay during the period 1979-2006, which showed almost neutral trend. The SST showed an increasing trend more particularly after 1992.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/njst.v12i0.6516 Nepal Journal of Science and Technology 12 (2011) 296-303