Observations and Dynamics of Circulations in the North Indian Ocean

The book is the first to focus on the physical oceanography of the North Indian Ocean (NIO), a special region of the global ocean that exhibits a distinct seasonality due to the impact of the South Asian Monsoon (SAM). It is written as a textbook about the NIO for graduate students, lecturers, and researchers in physical oceanography. It will also be useful for courses on the interior, coastal, and equatorial dynamics in any other ocean. It helps readers, particularly new entrants to the field, to gain a comprehensive understanding of tropical-ocean dynamics by: developing from first principles the equation set for the linear continuously stratified (LCS) model, which has long been used to study tropical oceans; and then obtaining solutions that explore different aspects of the dynamics.
Part 1 of the book provides an overview of observed ocean circulations and forcing functions in the NIO that are linked to the SAM. Part 2 develops the equations of motion for the LCS model. Part 3 (Free Waves) and Part 4 (Forced Solutions) derive and discuss analytic solutions to the LCS model that illustrate basic processes in the interior (unbounded), coastal, and equatorial regions of the ocean. The last two chapters of Part 4 consider more complicated processes and phenomena that build upon the simpler solutions previously found: vertical propagation of coastal and equatorial waves, and the Indian Ocean's shallow overturning circulations. Each analytic solution is illustrated (and extended) by a suite of numerical LCS solutions presented as video clips, providing a powerful means for visualizing complex processes.
About the Author: Julian McCreary received a Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is affiliated with the University of California at San Diego. He is now an Emeritus Professor in the Oceanography Department at the University of Hawaii. Throughout his career, he has sought to understand the basic physical processes that underlie ocean phenomena, includ¬ing coupled ocean-atmosphere and ocean-biological processes. From 1991-1998, he was Dean of the Oceanographic Center at Nova Southeastern University, and from 1999-2008, he was Director of the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii. Awards he has received include: 1981 AMS Editors Award, 1996 AMS Sverdrup Gold Medal, 1999 AGU Fellowship, and 2003 AMS Fellowship. Satish R. Shetye received a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He then joined the CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO), Goa, India. For more than three decades, he studied various aspects of the physical oceanography of the North Indian Ocean, with a special interest in the waters around India. In recognition of his contributions, he received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1992, fellowships from the three national science academies of India, and the Life Time Excellence Award 2021 (Ministry of Earth Sciences, India). He was Director of CSIR-NIO during 2004-12 and Vice Chancellor of Goa University from 2012-16.