Abstract
A prolonged high-salinity event in the northern Arabian Sea, to the east of the Gulf of Oman, during 2014-17 was identified based on Argo datasets. The prolonged event was manifested as enhanced spreading of the surface Arabian Sea high-salinity water and the intermediate Persian Gulf water. We used satellite altimetric data and geostrophic current data to understand the oceanic processes and the salt budget associated with the high-salinity event. The results indicated that the strengthened high-salinity advection from the Gulf of Oman was one of the main causes of the salinity increase in the northern Arabian Sea. The changes of the seasonally dependent eddies near the mouth of the Gulf of Oman dominated the strengthened high-salinity advection during the event as compared with the previous 4-yr period: the westward shifted cyclonic eddy during early winter stretched to the remote western Gulf of Oman, which carried the higher-salinity water to the northern Arabian Sea along the south coast of the Gulf. An anomalous eddy dipole during early summer intensified the eastward Ras Al Hadd Jet and its high-salinity advection into the northern Arabian Sea. In addition, the weakened low-salinity advection by coastal currents along the Omani coast caused by the weakened south-west monsoon contributed to the maintenance of the high-salinity event. This prolonged high-salinity event reflects the upper-ocean responses to the monsoon change and may affect the regional hydrography and biogeochemistry extensively.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 849-865 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of Physical Oceanography |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 3 2020 |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledgements: We acknowledge the International Argo Program giving the Argo temperature and salinity products (http://www.argo.ucsd.edu). The GPCP precipitation was obtained from the NASA/GSFC (http://precip.gsfc.nasa.gov). The OAFlux was provided by WHOI OAFlux Project of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (http://oaflux.whoi.edu). The OSCAR currents were provided by NOAA’s Ocean Surface Current Analyses Real Time (http://www.oscar.noaa.gov/index.html). The ECMWF ERA5 was available at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home.The NCEP Reanalysis Derived data was provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd). The SSHA was provided by the AVISO (http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en). The CCMP wind data are available from the RSS(http://www.remss.com/measurements/ccmp/). The DMI (http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/cmb/sst_analysis/) was available at NOAA/OOPC (https://stateoftheocean.osmc.noaa.gov/sur/ind/dmi.php). This work is supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA19060502, XDA13010404, ZDRW-XH-2019-2) the State Oceanic Administration of China (GASI-IPOVAI-02), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41976024, 41525019, 41830538, and 41506019) and the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou) (GML2019ZD0302 GML2019ZD0303). MF is supported by the Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (CSHOR) which is a joint initiative between the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (QNLM) CSIRO, University of New South Wales and University of Tasmania.