Indo-Pacific Sea surface temperature perturbations associated with intraseasonal oscillations of tropical convection

The intraseasonal variability (ISV; 20-90 days) of the SST is examined using 7 yr of data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission's (TRMM) Microwave Imager ( TMI). The ISV of the SST is larger in the summer hemisphere and in regions of relatively small ocean mixed layer depth (MLD). For these regions, the reddening of the SST spectrum in regard to the surface flux spectrum suggests that the ISV of the SST is mostly controlled by the integration of the local surface forcing by ocean mixed layer. However, the precise origin of large-scale organized perturbations of the SST also depends on region and season. Since the ISV of the convection is an intermittent phenomenon, the local mode analysis (LMA) technique is used to detect only the ensemble of intraseasonal events that are well organized at large scale. The LMA technique is further developed in this paper in order to perform multivariate analysis given patterns of SST and surface wind perturbations associated specifically with these intraseasonal events. During boreal winter, the basin- scale eastward propagation of the convective perturbation is present only over the Indian Ocean Basin. The intraseasonal SST response to convective perturbations is large and recurrent over thin mixed layer regions located north of Australia and in the Indian Ocean between 5 and 10 S. By contrast, there is little SST response in the western Pacific basin and no clear eastward propagation of the convective perturbation. During boreal summer, the SST response is large over regions with thin mixed layers located north of the Bay of Bengal, in the Arabian Sea, and in the China Sea. The northeastward propagation of the convective perturbation over the Bay of Bengal is associated with a standing oscillation of the SST and the surface wind between the equator and the northern part of the bay. In fact, many intraseasonal events mostly concern a single basin, suggesting that the interbasin organization is not a necessary condition for the existence of coupled intraseasonal perturbations of the convection. The perturbation of the surface wind tends to be larger to the west of the large-scale convective perturbation (like for a Gill- type dynamical response). For eastward propagating perturbations, the cooling due to the reinforcement of the wind (i. e., surface turbulent heat flux) thus generally lags the radiative cooling due to the reduction of the surface solar flux by the convective cloudiness. This large-scale Gill-type response of the surface wind also cools the surface to the west of the basin (northwest Arabian Sea and northwest Pacific Ocean), even if the convection is locally weak. An intriguing result is a frequently occurring small delay between the maximum surface wind and the minimum SST. Different explanations are invoked, like a rapid surface cooling due to the vanishing of an ocean warm layer (diurnal surface warming due to solar radiation in low wind conditions) as soon as the wind increases.