Abstract
Highly accurate ocean current measurements are very much important in the field of ocean engineering. Over the past decades, the High-Frequency (HF) Radars are known to be one of the important marine instruments for oceanographic studies. The present work focuses mainly on statistical analysis of HF radar-measured ocean surface current along the Odisha coast, north-western Bay of Bengal during 2015. The observations indicate that northward propagating Western Boundary Current (WBC) and southward propagating East India Coastal Current (EICC) can reach up to 1.8 m/s and 1.0 m/s, respectively. The zonal (meridional) components vary in the range −0.8 to 0.8 (−0.6 to 0.7) m/s along with standard deviation of 0.25 m/s for both the components with 99% significance level. The boxplot analysis shows the extreme values of both the zonal and meridional currents along with the negative medians; however, certain outliers are observed only for zonal currents. The 25th percentile is less than −0.20 m/s for the meridional currents, whereas opposite result for zonal currents. The zonal and meridional currents follow normal distribution, whereas the current magnitude and kinetic energy follow Weibull distribution. The Weibull shape parameter (β) varies for both the parameters: current magnitude (β > 1) and kinetic energy (0 < β < 1) due to the variations in moments, which indicates that in case of kinetic energy (current magnitude), the failure rate decreases (increases) over time. This circulation variability can be attributed predominantly to the winds and the coastal dynamics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Babu MT, Sarma YVB, Murty VSN, Vethamony P (2003) On the circulation in the Bay of Bengal during northern spring inter-monsoon (March–April 1987). Deep Sea Res Part II 5:855–865
Somayajulu YK, Murty VSN, Sarma YVB (2003) Seasonal and inter-annual variability of surface circulation in the Bay of Bengal from TOPEX/Poseidon altimetry. Deep-Sea Res I 50:867–880
Durand F, Shankar D, Birol F, Shenoi SSC (2009) Spatio-temporal structure of the East India Coastal Current from satellite altimetry. J Geophys Res 114:C02013
Gangopadhyay A, Bharat Raj GN, Chaudhuri AH, Babu MT, Sengupta D (2009) On the nature of meandering of the springtime western boundary current in the Bay of Bengal. Geophys Res Lett 40:2188–2193
Shankar D, McCreary JP, Han W, Shetye SR (1996) Dynamics of the East India Coastal Current: 1. Analytic solutions forced by interior Ekman pumping and local alongshore winds. J Geophys Res 101(C6):13975–13991
Vinayachandran PN, Kagimoto T, Masumoto Y, Chauhan P, Nayak SR, Yamagata T (2005) Bifurcation of the East India Coastal Current east of Sri Lanka. Geophys Res Lett 32:L15606
Sil S, Chakraborty A, Ravichandran M (2011) Numerical simulation of surface circulation features over the Bay of Bengal using regional ocean modeling system. Adv GeoSci 24:117–130
John M, Jena BK, Sivakholundu KM (2015) Surface current and wave measurement during cyclone Phailin by high frequency radars along the Indian coast. Curr Sci 108(3):405–409
Monahan AH (2006) The probability distribution of sea surface wind speeds. Part I: Theory and SeaWinds observations. J Clim 19:497–520
Mandal S, Sil S (2017) Coastal currents from HF radars along Odisha Coast. Ocean Dig Q Newsl Ocean Soc India 4:112
Jithin AK, Unnikrishnan AS, Fernando V, Subeesh MP, Fernandes R, Khalap S, Narayan S, Agarvadekar Y, Gaonkar M, Tari P, Kankonkar A, Verneka S (2017) Observed tidal currents on the continental shelf off the east coast of India. Cont Shelf Res 141:51–67
Murty TS, Henry RF (1983) Tidal harmonics in the Bay of Bengal. J Geophys Res 88(C10):6069–6076
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the financial support given by the ESSO-INCOIS, Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), and Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) of Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India. Also, we sincerely thank Coastal and Environmental Engineering Group, NIOT, Chennai for constant monitoring of the HF Radars and making the data availability efficient. We also acknowledge IITBBS for providing the research facility.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Mandal, S., Pramanik, S., Halder, S., Sil, S. (2019). Statistical Analysis of Coastal Currents from HF Radar Along the North-Western Bay of Bengal. In: Murali, K., Sriram, V., Samad, A., Saha, N. (eds) Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference in Ocean Engineering (ICOE2018). Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering , vol 23. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3134-3_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3134-3_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3133-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3134-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)