Abstract
Eddies along western boundary of the Bay of Bengal (WBoB) play an important role in regulating regional climate and marine productivity of the north Indian Ocean. In this paper, role of Andaman and Nicobar islands (ANIs) in the formation of eddies along the WBoB is studied using an ocean general circulation model. Our analysis shows that, in the absence of ANIs, there is a significant reduction in the total number of mesoscale eddies in this region. The impact is particularly evident for the cyclonic eddies as a reduction of ~50% can be noticed in the absence of the islands. In contrast, influence of ANIs on anticyclonic eddies is not homogeneous in the WBoB; while absence of ANIs significantly increases anticyclonic eddies in the central part of the WBoB, a decrease can be noticed in the southern part. We further show that the reduction in number of cyclonic eddies along the WBoB is primarily driven by reduced baroclinic and barotropic instabilities. This process is more conspicuous during winter (October–January) season compared to summer (June–September) and spring (February–May) seasons.
Highlights
The authors thank Dr Even Mason for publishing eddy detection algorithm code in a peer-review journal
We have found similar reduction in the total number of eddies in the CR′NoANIs compared to CR′ only during winter season in the western boundary of the Bay of Bengal (WBoB), but not during summer season (Fig. 2c–e)
This is related to weak instability formation in the presence of ANIs during spring season compared to summer and winter in the WBoB (Figs S8 and 3)
Summary
Islands in eddy formation along western boundary of the Bay of Received: 12 February 2019 Accepted: 1 July 2019 Published: xx xx xxxx. Eddies along western boundary of the Bay of Bengal (WBoB) play an important role in regulating regional climate and marine productivity of the north Indian Ocean. We further show that the reduction in number of cyclonic eddies along the WBoB is primarily driven by reduced baroclinic and barotropic instabilities This process is more conspicuous during winter (October– January) season compared to summer (June–September) and spring (February–May) seasons. Local Ekman pumping and remote response from the equatorial Indian Ocean (EIO) are believed to play important roles for the eddy variability in the BoB9. As these equatorial Kelvin waves reaches the coast of Sumatra, bifurcate into coastal Kelvin waves. Note here that the domain of our analysis for this study is restricted within 3–23°N and 78–98°E
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