Northern Arabian Sea Circulation-Autonomous Research (NASCar): A Research Initiative Based on Autonomous Sensors

Journal Article · Sat Sep 02 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Oceanography

DOI:https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2017.224· OSTI ID:1537215

Centurioni, Luca ^[1]; Hormann, Verena ^[1]; Talley, Lynne ^[1]; Arzeno, Isabella ^[1]; Beal, Lisa ^[2]; Caruso, Michael ^[2]; Conry, Patrick ^[3]; Echols, Rosalind ^[4]; Fernando, Harindra ^[3]; Giddings, Sarah ^[1]; Gordon, Arnold ^[5]; Graber, Hans ^[2]; Harcourt, Ramsey ^[4]; Jayne, Steven ^[6]; Jensen, Tommy ^[7]; Lee, Craig ^[4]; Lermusiaux, Pierre ^[8]; L’Hegaret, Pierre ^[2]; Lucas, Andrew ^[1]; Mahadevan, Amala ^[6] ; McClean, Julie ^[1]; Pawlak, Geno ^[9]; Rainville, Luc ^[4]; Riser, Stephen ^[4]; Seo, Hyodae ^[6]; Shcherbina, Andrey ^[4]; Skyllingstad, Eric ^[10]; Sprintall, Janet ^[1]; Subrahmanyam, Bulusu ^[11]; Terrill, Eric ^[1]; Todd, Robert ^[6]; Trott, Corinne ^[11]; Ulloa, Hugo ^[9]; Wang, He ^[1]

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1. Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States). Scripps Inst. of Oceanography
2. Univ. of Miami, FL (United States)
3. Univ. of Notre Dame, IN (United States)
4. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
5. Columbia Univ., Palisades, NY (United States). Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
6. Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst., Woods Hole, MA (United States)
7. Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI (United States)
8. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
9. Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
10. Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States)
11. Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, SC (United States)

The Arabian Sea circulation is forced by strong monsoonal winds and is characterized by vigorous seasonally reversing currents, extreme differences in sea surface salinity, localized substantial upwelling, and widespread submesoscale thermohaline structures. Its complicated sea surface temperature patterns are important for the onset and evolution of the Asian monsoon. This article describes a program that aims to elucidate the role of upper-ocean processes and atmospheric feedbacks in setting the sea surface temperature properties of the region. The wide range of spatial and temporal scales and the difficulty of accessing much of the region with ships due to piracy motivated a novel approach based on state-of-the-art autonomous ocean sensors and platforms. The extensive data set that is being collected, combined with numerical models and remote sensing data, confirms the role of planetary waves in the reversal of the Somali Current system. These data also document the fast response of the upper equatorial ocean to monsoon winds through changes in temperature and salinity and the connectivity of the surface currents across the northern Indian Ocean. New observations of thermohaline interleaving structures and mixing in setting the surface temperature properties of the northern Arabian Sea are also discussed.

• Research Organization: Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• Contributing Organization: Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0012778
• OSTI ID: 1537215
• Journal Information: Oceanography, Vol. 30, Issue 2; ISSN 1042-8275
• Publisher: The Oceanography Society
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Oceanography