Recent results from LOCEAN  team

Variability in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans between 2010 and 2011 is very large linked to the ending 2009-2010 El Nino, 2010 strong La Niña and 2011 weak La Niña events, and to negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) in 2010 (see Figure below).

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figure1 Time series of SST anomalies in the four Niño regions from http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/sstoi.indices in 2010-2011 and corresponding Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) Index (SST difference between eastern and western equatorial Indian Ocean) from the Australian bureau of Meteorology.

animIOD20112010

Large scale SSS variability is very consistently observed on SMOS SSS maps (1) compared with ISAS SSS maps (2) derived from in situ (ARGO floats and ship data) measurements, as seen on the film. SMOS anomalies are often more contrasted than ISAS anomalies due to fresher SMOS SSS in fresh regions associated with rain (Boutin et al., 2013). Signal is much noisier from January to May due to worse SMOS SSS quality during commissioning phase in January-May 2010, but nevertheless spatial structures of anomalies remain very consistent with ISAS maps.

(1) SMOS SSS maps are generated using ESA reprocessing version 5 as described in J. Boutin, N. Martin, G. Reverdin, X. Yin and F. Gaillard, Sea surface freshening inferred fromSMOS and ARGO salinity: Impact of rain, Ocean Sci., 9, 183-192, doi:10.5194/os-9-183-2013, 2013.

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