Abstract
Spectra from two decades of zonal current data at \(\sim \) 4000 m in the central and western equatorial Indian Ocean show a shift in the dominant frequencies from the west to the east. The 120–180-day period is stronger at 77\(^\circ \) E, the 60–120-day period at 83\(^\circ \) E, and the 30–90-day period at 93\(^\circ \) E. The weakening of lower frequencies near the eastern boundary can be explained using theoretical ray paths of Kelvin waves and reflected Rossby waves. The equatorial Kelvin wave forced by winds reflects from the eastern boundary as Rossby waves with different meridional modes. After reflection, the low (high) frequency Rossby beams travel a larger (shorter) distance before reaching the bottom, thereby creating a shadow zone, a region with low wave energy, between the ray path and the eastern boundary. The shift in frequency with longitude is not evident in the top 1000 m, where the current is dominated by the semi-annual cycle.
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Data availability
The ocean current data are available from https://incois.gov.in/essdp/. The wind data were obtained from https://coastwatch.pfeg.noaa.gov/. The temperature and salinity data are from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/world-ocean-atlas.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Julian P. McCreary for sharing his insights on the equatorial beam theory and D. Shankar for his critical comments. The support from the CSIR-NIO mooring group (V. Fernando, N. P. Satelkar, S. T. Khalap, S. Ghatkar, P. A. Tari, and M. G. Gaonkar), ship cell members (M. S. Kerkar, S. P. Vernekar and A. C. D’Souza), officers, crew, and seamen from various cruises is gratefully acknowledged. The mooring operations were carried out on the research vessels O. R. V. Sagar Kanya, R. V. Sindhu Sadhana, and T. D. V. Sagar Nidhi. The authors also thank V. S. N. Murty and his colleagues for overseeing the deep-sea mooring programme from 2000 to 2017. This is CSIR-NIO contribution 6861.
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Financial support for this project was provided by Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), India via their Ocean Observation Network (OON) programme and by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
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PA: conceived and designed the study; acquired, analysed, and interpreted the data; drafted the article. VJ: acquired and analysed the data; drafted the article; implemented computer programs. SGA: processed and organised the data; reviewed and edited the article.
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Amol, P., Jain, V. & Aparna, S.G. Blue-shifted deep ocean currents in the equatorial Indian Ocean. Clim Dyn 59, 219–229 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-06125-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-06125-9