Indian Ocean wind speed variability and global teleconnection patterns

Abstract

Summary: The influence of the local sea surface temperature (SST) and remote ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) indices on the wind speed (WS) data were explored for the Indian Ocean region. Relationships among the parameters were studied using spatial correlation plots and significant correlation ranges. Two months (July and January) representing opposite monsoon phases were selected for analysis for the period 1950–2016. There was a significant negative correlation between WS and SST over the Bay of Bengal (BOB) during July. Although different ENSO indices correlated differently in different areas of the Indian Ocean, the region off the coast of Sri Lanka was most significantly teleconnected. The southwest monsoon locally impacted the WS and SST relationship and the WS parameter was remotely teleconnected in both the monsoon seasons. Further empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis was applied on the 67 years WS data of the BOB region to extract the dominant mode representing maximum variability of the total variance. The temporal pattern of the first principal component (PC1) of WS data was linked to the North Atlantic Oscillations in January and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation in July respectively. The continuous wavelet power spectra of the PC1 of WS showed significant regions in the 2–4-year band resembling the ENSO variability. Wavelet coherence applied between PC1 of WS and the ENSO indices showed greatest values for January in the 8–16-year band and for July in the 0–4-year band. A close relationship was established between the WS variability in BOB and the ENSO indices. Keywords: Wind speed, Sea surface temperature, Monsoon, Wavelet coherence, Indian Ocean, Global teleconnection