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Normal Modes of the South Indian Ocean in a Shallow-Water Model
Wilbert Weijer
Los Alamos National Laboratory
(Abstract received 06/15/2007 for session X)
ABSTRACT
The Indian Ocean displays a large variety of bathymetric features, with ridges, oceanic plateaus and continental islands outlining a considerable number of abyssal plains. Consequently, barotropic variability in the Indian Ocean is strongly controlled by bathymetry, and is in many cases organized in spatially coherent modes. In this presentation I will give an overview of the barotropic modes of the Indian Ocean. These modes are determined through normal mode analysis in a barotropic shallow-water model of the South Indian Ocean. This analysis provides a dynamical basis for several modes of variability that have been observed in recent years, most specifically in the Mascarene Basin and the Australian-Antarctic Basin. In addition, several modes are found that have not been described in the literature, in particular a series of topographic Rossby wave modes on the Southeast Indian Ridge.
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2007 LOM Workshop, Bergen, Norway, August 20-22, 2007