Seasonal and Interannual Sea Surface Temperature Variability in the Coastal Cities of Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal

Abstract

The sea surface temperature (SST) variations play a veryimportant role in the genesis and maintenance of meteorological and oceanographic processessuch as monsoon depressions and subsequent floods, large-scale sea level fluctuationsand genesis of tropical cyclones. Many low lying coastal regions of South Asia are adjacentto river deltas and have large population. The dense population, poor economy and severalother socio-economic factors make these areas most vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Variability of sea surface temperature (SST) is importantas the duration and intensity of SST provide the basis for studies related to climatic changescenario. In this study an attempt has been made to estimate the recent SST trends in the coastalwaters of some cities, which lie on the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. The annual andinterannual variability has also been studied. The SST variations have then been linkedwith the El Nino and La Nina events. The NOAA-NASA Pathfinder Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) SST fields from 1985-1998, created in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL), USA are used in this study. Here the quality of data is an important factor toobtain reliable estimates of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) trends and other related parameters.However, this is not possible with the conventional type data, due to low quality as wellas sparse data in the region. Though the satellite based SST climatologies have shorterobservation lengths, they can provide reliable estimates of recent SST variability overa large oceanic areas with sparse or no data. Increasing trend of SST is observed throughout all theseasons in the northern Arabian Sea extending from Oman to Karachi and Mumbai and furthersouth to Salalah and Colombo. However, in coastal islands stations further south ofIndia such as at Colombo the increment is not significant. Though the increasing trend in SSTduring winter is not significant, nevertheless it shows the increasing influence of coldspells on this Island. An interesting situation has been observed in the Bay of Bengal. On anaverage, increasing trends in the annual SST were observed in Visakhaputnam. But at thestations located in the northeastern part of Bay of Bengal, namely Hiron Point and Cox'sBazar reverse conditions are observed. In the Southern Bay of Bengal variations in SST isnot significant which reflects in the SST analysis of Chennai and Port Blair stations. Locationof these stations at lower latitudes (near by equator) probably is the reason for this insignificantchange. It has been found that the interannual mode of SST variations dominate the linear SSTtrends which is characterized by the El Nino Southern Oscillations (ENSO) scale cycle.