Abstract
Near-surface measurements of meridional velocity suggest that wind forcing excites equatorial waves in the biweekly band in the Indian Ocean. The characteristics of these waves in the deep ocean are poorly constrained, and it is unclear how well models capture the deep variability. In this work, biweekly temperature variations in a few low vertical modes in the deep East Indian Ocean are observed using seismically generated sound waves. These so-called T waves are generated by earthquakes off Sumatra and received by a hydrophone station off Diego Garcia. Changes in their travel time reflect temperature-induced sound speed variations in the intervening ocean. Regression analysis indicates that these variations are caused by westward-propagating Yanai waves. The comparison between T wave data and model output shows generally good consistency in biweekly variations dominated by the first three vertical modes, although the biweekly variance differs by up to a factor of two between the data and the models. A similar degree of discrepancy appears in the comparison between the models and deep-mooring measurements. These results highlight the potential of using T wave data to study biweekly Yanai waves in the deep equatorial ocean and to calibrate numerical simulations of the variability they cause.
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