Inter-annual Variability and Prediction of Eddies in the Gulf of Aden and the Somali Current Region

It is the research goal to understand and quantify the physical processes that determine the air-sea interaction, currents and hydrography in the western Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, from diurnal time scales to inter-annual variability. OBJECTIVES The objective of the proposed research is to provide a detailed investigation of the physical aspects of eddies found in the Gulf of Aden and in the Somali Current region in the Arabian Sea. The project will quantify the physical characteristics and statistics of the eddies, including their horizontal scales, their strenght with depth, their influence on temperature, salinity and density, their generation and their life span. More specifically, the objectives are To provide a climatology and statistics of eddy fields in the Gulf of Aden based on observations from satellite altimeters and hindcast ocean models and to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the eddy generation and dynamics. To investigate the impact of the eddies on air-sea interaction using correlation analysis between sea surface height anomalies and air-sea fluxes