Kumar B. Praveen

No Thumbnail Available
Last Name
Kumar
First Name
B. Praveen
ORCID

Filters

2016 2
2
2
Reset filters

Settings

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Article
    Variability of near-surface circulation and sea surface salinity observed from Lagrangian drifters in the northern Bay of Bengal during the Waning 2015 Southwest Monsoon
    (The Oceanography Society, 2016-06) Hormann, Verena ; Centurioni, Luca R. ; Mahadevan, Amala ; Essink, Sebastian ; D'Asaro, Eric A. ; Kumar, B. Praveen
    A dedicated drifter experiment was conducted in the northern Bay of Bengal during the 2015 waning southwest monsoon. To sample a variety of spatiotemporal scales, a total of 36 salinity drifters and 10 standard drifters were deployed in a tight array across a freshwater front. The salinity drifters carried for the first time a revised sensor algorithm, and its performance during the 2015 field experiment is very encouraging for future efforts. Most of the drifters were quickly entrained in a mesoscale feature centered at about 16.5°N, 89°E and stayed close together during the first month of observations. While the eddy was associated with rather homogeneous temperature and salinity characteristics, much larger variability was found outside of it toward the coastline, and some of the observed salinity patches had amplitudes in excess of 1.5 psu. To particularly quantify the smaller spatiotemporal scales, an autocorrelation analysis of the drifter salinities for the first two deployment days was performed, indicating not only spatial scales of less than 5 km but also temporal variations of the order of a few hours. The hydrographic measurements were complemented by first estimates of kinematic properties from the drifter clusters, however, more work is needed to link the different observed characteristics.
  • Article
    Air-sea interaction in the Bay of Bengal
    (The Oceanography Society, 2016-06) Weller, Robert A. ; Farrar, J. Thomas ; Buckley, Jared ; Mathew, Simi ; Venkatesan, Ramasamy ; Lekha, J. Sree ; Chaudhuri, Dipanjan ; Kumar, N. Suresh ; Kumar, B. Praveen
    Recent observations of surface meteorology and exchanges of heat, freshwater, and momentum between the ocean and the atmosphere in the Bay of Bengal are presented. These observations characterize air-sea interaction at 18°N, 89.5°E from December 2014 to January 2016 and also at other locations in the northern Bay of Bengal. Monsoonal variability dominated the records, with winds to the northeast in summer and to the southwest in winter. This variability included a strong annual cycle in the atmospheric forcing of the ocean in the Bay of Bengal, with the winter monsoon marked by sustained ocean heat loss resulting in ocean cooling, and the summer monsoon marked by strong storm events with dark skies and rain that also resulted in ocean cooling. The spring intermonsoon was a period of clear skies and low winds, when strong solar heating and weak wind-driven mixing led to ocean warming. The fall intermonsoon was a transitional period, with some storm events but also with enough clear skies and sunlight that ocean surface temperature rose again. Mooring and shipboard observations are used to examine the ability of model-based surface fluxes to represent air-sea interaction in the Bay of Bengal; the model-based fluxes have significant errors. The surface forcing observed at 18°N is also used together with a one-dimensional ocean model to illustrate the potential for local air-sea interaction to drive upper-ocean variability in the Bay of Bengal.