Abstract
Recent work has shown that the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) winds around the Maritime Continent can drive a see-saw in oceanic mass between the Indian and Pacific oceans on intraseasonal time scales. During the boreal winter of 2012–13, this see-saw accounted for about two thirds of an unusually large (~ 30 mas, milliarcseconds) fluctuation in the oceanic excitation of Earth’s polar motion about the 90°E meridian. Interestingly, the magnitude of the oceanic influence was nearly at par, but out-of-phase with that of the atmosphere and a factor of ~ 10 larger than effects associated with the hydrological cycle. Here we show that oceanic mass changes and transport anomalies during the 2012–13 boreal winter were indeed most pronounced in the Indo-Pacific basin, and that they possessed a favorable geometry to excite polar motion variations about the 90°E meridian. Phase alignment of the excitation signals from different regions, as well as between mass and motion terms, was a key characteristic of the 2012–13 event, but was far less distinct in other strong see-saw years. Basin-wise, the Indian Ocean acted as a dominant contributor to the 2012–13 polar motion excitation at MJO periods, followed by the Pacific basin. Overall, ocean dynamics in the 10°−65°S latitudinal belt over the Indo-Pacific basin accounted for ~ 93% of the global oceanic excitation function during the 2012–13 winter. The processes figuring most prominently in modulating intraseasonal polar motion were mass rearrangements in the southern Indian Ocean and the south-east Pacific Ocean, the east Australian current, and the Antarctic circumpolar current around the Antarctic landmass. Wind-driven dynamics in the Southern Ocean thus appear to be the main cause for the 2012–13 oceanic excitation signal not attributable to the see-saw.
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Data Availability
The daily polar motion excitation function from NEMO has been deposited at Mendeley Data and is freely available to download. The ECMWF, MPIOM and LSDM data are available from. IERS polar motion excitations and NCEP/NCAR data were downloaded from https://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/analysis/excitactive.html. ECCOv4r4 data are available from https://www.ecco-group.org/geodetic-variables.htm
Notes
Here and elsewhere in this study, the variance in A captured by B is calculated using the equation, 1 − (variance(A − B)/variance(A)).
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Acknowledgements
We appreciate the helpful suggestions by Erik Ivins (handling editor), Henryk Dobslaw, and an anonymous reviewer.
Funding
The second author is grateful to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for providing the Research Fellowship grant. This work is supported by INCOIS, MOES, and by the project “Barotropic Influence on Global Ocean (BINGO); grant no 41-DS-GMMC-BINGO-CNRS195918”. MS was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Project no. 459392861). Discussions with Dr. Olivier de Viron are greatly acknowledged. This is INCOIS contribution number 509.
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The concept of the paper was proposed by AP, BR, MA, SS and FD. Material preparation and data processing were performed by MA and BR. RB assisted in setting up the model. Analyses were performed by all authors. The manuscript was written and revised by AP and MS with all authors commenting on the manuscript through multiple discussions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Paul, A., Afroosa, M., Rohith, B. et al. The Anomalous 2012–13 Boreal Winter Oceanic Excitation of Earth’s Polar Motion. Pure Appl. Geophys. 181, 433–449 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-024-03429-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-024-03429-9