Study of Energy Fluxes over the Indian Ocean Prior and During the Summer Monsoon

Abstract

There is an overall reduction in the incoming shortwave radiation and latent heat flux during surplus monsoon years for the month of May and monsoon season both for NCEPR (energy fluxes taken directly from reanalysis data of NCEP/NCAR) and NCEPC (energy fluxes computed with semi-empirical relations using basic fields of the reanalysis data) as compared to deficient monsoon years. The distribution of net heat flux is predominantly negative over the eastern Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and Indian Ocean. The comparison of shortwave radiation flux and latent heat flux for NCEPR and NCEPC shows that NCEPC overestimates in the North Arabian Sea and North Bay of Bengal and underestimates in the Indian Ocean as compared to NCEPR. However, the pattern of energy fluxes is almost similar both for NCEPR and NCEPC.

Keywords:

• NCEP/NCAR reanalysis
• energy fluxes
• surplus
• deficient

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express sincere thanks to National Center for Environmental prediction/ National Centre for Atmospheric Research, United States, for providing the necessary data sets.