| Summary: | Current and temperature data were acquired in the source region of the Somali Current, jointly by the Universities of Kiel and Miami, as part of the INDEX pilot studies. The data were acquired over a six-month period (January-July, 1976) which spans the springtime Monsoon reversal. The experiment and the data are described in Düing and Schott (1978).
This thesis describes the results of the spectrum analysis of fluctuations found in data from the experiment's two southernmost sensor locations. It is found that, once the annual cycle is removed, most of the variance in these current and temperature records resides in subinertial fluctuations. The most prominent spectral feature is a 40- to 50-day peak.
This 40- to 50-day period is coincident with that of the global-scale circulation cells found in the tropical atmosphere by Madden and Julian (1971 and 1972). The analysis of wind stress and wind stress curl data for the years 1976 and 1979 presented in this thesis indicate that the 40-to 50-day oscillation was present over the Western Indian Ocean during these years. It is suggested here that wind-forcing excites a long coastally trapped wave. To test this idea, a wind-forced quasi-geostrophic, three-layer model and a reduced-gravity model incorporating lateral mean current shear are applied to the Somali Current regime. Model results suggest that the wind forcing is strong enough to excite the observed current and temperature fluctuations. === Science, Faculty of === Physics and Astronomy, Department of === Graduate
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