The correlation between sea surface temperature and MJO incidence in Indonesian waters

Abstract

Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a large-scale atmospheric phenomenon that crosses the equator within range of 15° North to 15° South and moves from West to East respectively. The MJO is closely related to weather anomalies (excess rainfall) that occur during the dry season in Indonesia and can make an unstable environment due to the sustainability of several staples plantation. This phenomenon is suspected to be related directly to the occurrence of sea surface temperature fluctuations in equatorial areas. This research aims to analyze the relation of sea surface temperature fluctuation in Indonesian waters with the MJO incidence, through the empirical method with statistical calculation, based on Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) which is representing the MJO incidence. The data of these two variables were obtained from ESRL NOAA, with a range of 35 years, from 1982 to 2016. With the hypothesis that the two data are directly correlated to each other, by using Bandpass filtering scheme, the filtering results then analyzed using simple linear regression method. It founded that the correlation between these two variables can reach up to 80.2%, and it means that the MJO incidence is directly correlated with SST in the Indonesian waters respectively.