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Influence of ENSO Events on the Agulhas Leakage Region

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Abstract

This study explores the subsurface oceanic response to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the southern tropical Indian Ocean and Agulhas leakage region. The subsurface temperature and salinity responses of the southern tropical Indian Ocean and Agulhas leakage are studied using Argo float data. In addition, AVISO satellite-derived sea surface height (SSH) data is used to examine the propagation of an ENSO signal across the Indian Ocean to the Agulhas leakage region and its impact on eddy propagation within the leakage region. During the peak of an ENSO event, the Indian Ocean basin is anomalously warm up to 500 m depth in response to El Niño, but anomalously cool in response to La Niña. Sea surface salinity is anomalously fresh for both events in the eastern and western Indian Ocean basins, but the subsurface salinity signal during El Niño is anomalously saline to about 150 m in both basins. The subsurface signals last approximately 1 year (2 years) after the peak of ENSO in the eastern (western) Indian Ocean basin. The subsurface signal in the Agulhas leakage region is anomalously warm 2 years after El Niño and anomalously cool 2 years after La Niña. Westward propagation of SSH anomalies across the Indian Ocean basin is evident at 12°S and 25°S latitudes and it takes 2 years for the initial signal of Rossby waves to reach Agulhas leakage region after the peak of an ENSO event.

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Acknowledgements

The author, VSN Murty is thankful to the Director, CSIR-NIO for his keen interest and support for this collaborative research work. Argo floats temperature and salinity data is courtesy of the Asia Pacific Data Research Center (http://apdrc.soest.hawaii.edu/datadoc/Argo_iprc.php). The authors would like to thank the following data centers for providing the datasets used to conduct this study: the IPRC APDRC (http://apdrc.soest.hawaii.edu/projects/argo/) and NASA JPL PO.DAAC for providing SST data. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor, whose comments significantly contributed to the improvement of this paper.

Funding

This work is supported by the ONR NASCar (Northern Arabian Sea Circulation-autonomous research) award #N00014-17-1-2468 awarded to BS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences, Auburn University, 8300 State Highway 104, Fairhope, AL, 36532, USA

    Morgan L. Paris

  2. School of the Earth, Ocean, and Environment, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Bulusu Subrahmanyam & Corinne B. Trott

  3. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-National Institute of Oceanography Regional Centre, Visakhapatnam, 530 017, India

    V. S. N. Murty

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  1. Morgan L. Paris
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  2. Bulusu Subrahmanyam
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  4. V. S. N. Murty
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Correspondence to Morgan L. Paris.

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Paris, M.L., Subrahmanyam, B., Trott, C.B. et al. Influence of ENSO Events on the Agulhas Leakage Region. Remote Sens Earth Syst Sci 1, 79–88 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41976-018-0007-z

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