Variations of Surface Air Temperature Over the Land Areas in and Around the Bay of Bengal

The inter-annual variation and linear trends of the surface air temperature in the regions in and around the Bay of Bengal have been studied using the time series data of monthly and annual mean temperature for 20–40 years period within 1951–1990. The study area extends from Pusma Camp of Nepal in the north and Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia in the south and between 80--100 ° E. The annual variation of temperature has also been studied using the mean monthly temperature for the variable time frames 1961–1975, 1976–1990 and 1961–1990. The trend of temperature has been analyzed using linear regression technique with the data from 1961–1990, which showed that the warming trend is dominant over the study areas except for a few stations. It has been found that Nepal shows predominant warming trends. Bangladesh and the adjacent areas of India and the northern part of Bay of Bengal adjacent to the Bangladesh coast have shown strong warming trends of the annual temperature with maximum at Dhaka (0.037 °C/year). The near equatorial zone, i.e., southern India, Sri Lanka and part of Thailand and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) shows warming trends in the annual mean temperature with strong warming at Pamban and Anuradhapura (around 0.04 °C/year). The cooling trends have been observed at a few stations including Port Blair, Yangoon and Cuttack. Further analysis shows the presence of prominent ENSO scale of variations with time period 4–7 years and 2–3 years for almost all the stations. The decadal mode with T >7 years is present in some data series. The results of the variations of temperature with respect to the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) show that SOI has some negative correlation with temperature for most of the stations except those in the extreme northeast. It has been found that positive anomaly of temperature has been observed for El Niño events and negative anomaly for the La Nina events.     

Impact of Southern Oscillation on the Frequency of Monsoon Depressions in the Bay of Bengal

The impact of Southern Oscillation on thecyclogenesis over the Bay of Bengal duringthe summer monsoon has been investigated.The analysis of correlation coefficients(CCs) between the frequency of monsoondepressions and the Southern OscillationIndex (SOI) reveals that more depressionsform during July and August of El Niñoyears. Due to this, the seasonal frequencyof monsoon depressions remains little higherduring El Niño epochs even though thecorrelations for June and September are notsignificant. The CCs for July and August aresignificant at the 99% level.The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)is known to affect Indian MonsoonRainfall (IMR) adversely. The enhancedcyclogenesis over the Bay of Bengal duringJuly and August is an impact of ENSO whichneeds to be examined closely. Increasedcyclogenesis over the Bay of Bengal may bereducing the deficiency in IMR duringEl Niño years by producing more rainfallover the eastern parts of India duringJuly and August. Thus there is a considerablespatial variation in the impact of ENSOon the monsoon rainfall over India and El Niñoneed not necessarily imply a monsoonfailure everywhere in India.The area of formation of monsoon depressionsshifts eastward during El Niño years.Warmer sea surface temperature (SST) anomaliesprevail over northwest and adjoiningwestcentral Bay of Bengal during premonsoon andmonsoon seasons of El Niño years.May minus March SOI can provide useful predictionsof monsoon depression frequencyduring July and August.     

Link between convection and meridional gradient of sea surface temperature in the Bay of Bengal

We use daily satellite estimates of sea surface temperature (SST) and rainfall during 1998–2005 to show that onset of convection over the central Bay of Bengal (88–92°E, 14–18°N) during the core summer monsoon (mid-May to September) is linked to the meridional gradient of SST in the bay. The SST gradient was computed between two boxes in the northern (88–92°E, 18–22°N) and southern (82–88°E, 4–8°N) bay; the latter is the area of the cold tongue in the bay linked to the Summer Monsoon Current. Convection over central bay followed the SST difference between the northern and southern bay (ΔT) exceeding 0.75°C in 28 cases. There was no instance of ΔT exceeding this threshold without a burst in convection. There were, however, five instances of convection occurring without this SST gradient. Long rainfall events (events lasting more than a week) were associated with an SST event (ΔT ≥ 0.75°C); rainfall events tended to be short when not associated with an SST event. The SST gradient was important for the onset of convection, but not for its persistence: convection often persisted for several days even after the SST gradient weakened. The lag between ΔT exceeding 0.75°C and the onset of convection was 0–18 days, but the lag histogram peaked at one week. In 75% of the 28 cases, convection occurred within a week of ΔT exceeding the threshold of 0.75°C. The northern bay SST, T _N , contributed more to ΔT, but it was a weaker criterion for convection than the SST gradient. A sensitivity analysis showed that the corresponding threshold for T _N was 29°C. We hypothesise that the excess heating (∼1°C above the threshold for deep convection) required in the northern bay to trigger convection is because this excess in SST is what is required to establish the critical SST gradient.