A dipole mode in the tropical Indian ocean

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Abstract

For the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans, internal modes of variability that lead to climatic oscillations have been recognized, but in the Indian Ocean region a similar ocean-atmosphere interaction causing interannual climate variability has not yet been found. Here we report an analysis of observational data over the past 40 years, showing a dipole mode in the Indian Ocean: a pattern of internal variability with anomalously low sea surface temperatures off Sumatra and high sea surface temperatures in the western Indian Ocean, with accompanying wind and precipitation anomalies. The spatio-temporal links between sea, surface temperatures and winds reveal a strong coupling through the precipitation field and ocean dynamics. This air- sea interaction process is unique and inherent in the Indian Ocean, and is shown to be independent of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation. The discovery of this dipole mode that accounts for about 12% of the sea surface temperature variability in the Indian Ocean - and, in its active years, also causes severe rainfall in eastern Africa and droughts in Indonesia - brightens the prospects for a long-term forecast of rainfall anomalies in the affected countries.

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Saji, N. H., Goswami, B. N., Vinayachandran, P. N., & Yamagata, T. (1999). A dipole mode in the tropical Indian ocean. Nature, 401(6751), 360–363. https://doi.org/10.1038/43854

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