Air-sea fluxes and upper-ocean evolution in the Arabian Sea
Abstract
Predicting the onset and variability of the monsoons over the northern Indian Ocean and surrounding landmasses remains a substantial challenge to weather forecasters. The summer monsoon is extremely consequential for people in India and southeast Asia because itbrings significant rainfall, wind, and tropical cyclones. These monsoons are a key component of the large-scale atmospheric circulation, and errors in simulating them can have far-reaching effects on long-range forecasts. These forecast errors are consequentialto both the tactical and humanitarian missions of the Navy. In this project, we propose to observe and improve understanding of thephysics of air-sea interaction in the Arabian Sea by deploying a fleet of four instrumented Wave Gliders for a full annual cycle. These platforms are well suited to operate in such a challenging area of the world, alleviating some of the logistical issues inherent to traditional approaches (research vessels in particular) and enabling spatio-temporal sampling of the processes of interest (e.g., build up and destruction of the Arabian Sea Warm Pool) that can occur over many months. These autonomous platforms are designed to provide high-resolution surface meteorological measurements and subsurface measurements of temperature, salinity, velocity, and their horizontal gradients at multiple locations to enable new insights into the heat and salt budgets of the Arabian Sea warm pool over a complete annual cycle. This abstract is publicly releasable.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 12, 2023
- Source ID
- N000142312055
Entities
People
- Luc Lenain
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of California, San Diego