Inter-annual Variability of Sea Surface Temperature in the Arabian Sea

Sea surface temperature (SST) evolves in the upper ocean (~10 m) due to ocean dynamics such as mixing and advection and due to air-sea fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum (Bjerknes et al., 1969; Rasmusson et al., 1983; Webster et al., 1999; Legeckis et al., 1986). In the Arabian Sea (hereafter referred as AS), many previous studies (Shukla et al., 1975; Washington et al., 1977; Druyan et al., 1983) on the annual cycle of SST has shown that SST anomalies found in this ocean can influence the rainfall pattern of southwest monsoon over the Indian peninsula. Besides, many researchers (Rao and Goswami, 1988; Clark et al., 2000; Kothawale et al., 2008; Boschat et al., 2011) also explored the connection between inter-annual SST variations and rainfall distribution over India.