7 March 2013 LOCEAN news item – Large scale salinity contrasts in the tropics
Variability in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans between 2010 and 2011 is very large linked to the ending 2009-2010 El Nino, 2010 strong La Niña and 2011 weak La Niña events, and to contrasted Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) in 2010 and 2011 (see Figure below).
Figure 1: Time series of SST anomalies in the four Niño regions from http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/sstoi.indices in 2010-2011 and corresponding Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) Index (SST difference between eastern and western equatorial Indian Ocean) from the Australian bureau of Meteorology.
