Marine Hydrology

Extraction of Rossby wave speed and deformation radius in the tropical Indian Ocean from multi-satellite altimeter data

  • ZHANG Guo-sheng ,
  • ZHANG Biao ,
  • DU Yan ,
  • WANG Lei
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  • 1. School of Marine Science, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China; 2. College of Harbor, Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China; 3. State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography (South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Guangzhou 510301, China; 4. School of Atmosphere Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China;

Received date: 2013-09-18

  Revised date: 2014-04-08

  Online published: 2014-09-29

Abstract

We estimated the Rossby wave phase speed in the tropical Indian Ocean (5°~20°S, and 5°~20°N) based on two- dimensional Radon Transform method, using monthly average sea level anomaly data (1993~2001) from multi-altimeters. We also calculated the first baroclinic gravity-wave phase speed, in combination with Rossby wave theoretical model, and the density by using climatologically averaged temperature and salinity profiles from the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) reanalysis data (1993~2008). We found that Rossby wave phase speeds from model simulation and altimeter observations are in good agreement in 5°~20°S, but are quite different in 5°~20°N. The difference is possibly caused by 1) Rossby waves are diffracted and reflected by salient topographic features, and 2) interaction of Rossby waves generated by different boundaries. We computed the Rossby wave deformation radius utilizing the estimated phase speed, and further presented an analytic quadratic formula between latitude and deformation radius.

Cite this article

ZHANG Guo-sheng , ZHANG Biao , DU Yan , WANG Lei . Extraction of Rossby wave speed and deformation radius in the tropical Indian Ocean from multi-satellite altimeter data[J]. Journal of Tropical Oceanography, 2014 , 33(5) : 22 -27 . DOI: 10.11978/j.issn.1009-5470.2014.05.003

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