Marine Biology Commons^™

New Approaches To Understanding Mjo Dynamics, Casey Shoup

Theses and Dissertations

The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a highly air-sea coupled phenomenon and is the dominant mode of intraseasonal variability in the tropics. It is easily discernible in satellite-derived sea surface salinity (SSS), which varies as a direct result of MJO precipitation from the convectively active to suppressed phases. Negative (positive) SSS anomalies are associated with the active (suppressed) phase of the MJO. We find that all three available satellite salinity missions (ESA’s Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS); NASA’s Aquarius/SAC-D, and NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)) are capable of capturing the MJO SSS signal and that the near-equatorial SSS response is …