Study of latent heat fluxes and associated oceanic and atmospheric parameters over the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal using Seasat-SMMR data

Abstract

Study of the latent heat fluxes has been done over the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal using the data of sea surface temperature (SST) and ocean surface wind speed derived from Seasat-scanning multichannel microwave radiometer (SMMR). Sea surface pressure (SSP) and surface air temperature (SAT) data from the output of the model of Fleet Numeric Oceanographic Centre (FNOC) supplied by Seasat Geophysical Data Records (GDRs) have been used in this study. The surface level humidity has been obtained by global surface level humidity and precipitable water relation developed by Liu [Mon Weather Rev (USA), 114 (1986) 1591]. The evaporation has been computed using the bulk aerodynamic formula and its correlation has been studied with surface and atmospheric parameters such as wind speed, water vapour and SST. A linear relationship between latent heat flux and the difference between SST and SAT has been observed. No such relation has been found with water vapour against the differential sea surface and air temperature. The study indicates the potential of passive microwave radiometers to monitor the latent heat flux variability over oceans, which is useful to several coupled ocean-atmosphere research problems.