Air-sea interactions and Bay of Bengal basin wide variability with respect to long tracked cyclone ‘Viyaru’

Abstract

The Bay of Bengal (BoB) is a potentially active region for the formation of the Tropical Cyclones (TCs) and accounts for about 6% of the global annual total number of tropical storms. These TCs occur during the pre-monsoon (March–May) and post-monsoon (October–November) seasons over the BoB. Among all the pre-monsoon cyclones that occurred from 1993 to 2019, we have identified that the “Viyaru” is a typical one originated in the southern BoB, propagated approximately through the middle of the bay, and made landfall over the northern BoB. The cyclonic storm Viyaru caused a basin-scale sea surface cooling of 0.35 °C by increasing the mixed layer depth by 3.5 m over the Bay of Bengal. An analysis of mixed layer heat budget terms infers that reduced short wave radiation and increased latent heat fluxes as the key factors responsible for basin-wide cooling associated with the Viyaru cyclone. We have also found that the enhanced entrainment processes even after the dissipation of the Viyaru cyclone had resulted in a post-cyclone basin-wide cooling tendency over the Bay of Bengal. The present study exemplifies the role of a pre-monsoon cyclone (Viyaru) in impacting the Bay of Bengal basin-scale variability of surface Physical Oceanographic variables and associated processes.