Distinctive Characteristics and Dynamics of the Summer and Autumn Indian Ocean Dipole Events

Abstract

Abstract The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) with worldwide socio-economic impacts has been presented to mature either in boreal summer or autumn, leading to the classification of summer IOD and autumn IOD. Investigating the climate dynamics to distinguish between these two types of IOD can improve our understanding and prediction of the surrounding weather and climate. This study demonstrates that the emergence of the summer IOD is mainly attributed to internal air-sea interactions in the western tropical Indian Ocean (WIO), while the autumn IOD is significantly related to ENSO development. For the summer IOD, broad-scaled warm sea surface temperature anomalies in the WIO are conducive to the enhancement of convective perturbations. Then local ocean-atmosphere feedback associated with changes in convection and surface heat flux into the upper ocean plays a key role in triggering the summer IOD. For the autumn IOD, strong easterly wind anomalies in the eastern Indian Ocean initiate oceanic Rossby waves and Bjerknes feedback, leading to the formation of both the western and eastern poles. It is recognized that these intensified easterly wind anomalies mostly benefit from ENSO variability. The distinctive features and air-sea interactions intrinsic to the summer IOD and the autumn IOD revealed in this study can further contribute to more credible predictive models of diverse IOD events.