ANALYSIS OF SATELLITE SEA-SURFACE TEMPERATURE TIME-SERIES IN THE BRAZIL-MALVINAS CURRENT CONFLUENCE REGION - DOMINANCE OF THE ANNUAL AND SEMIANNUAL PERIODS

We study the dominant periodic variations of sea surface temperature (SST) in the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence region from a satellite-derived data set compiled by Olson et al. (1988). This data set is composed of 202 sea surface temperature images with a 4 x 4 km resolution and extends over 3 years (from July 1984 to July 1987). Each image is a 5-day composite. The dominant signal, as already observed by Podesta et al. (1991), has a 1-year period. We first fit a single-frequency sinusoidal model of the annual cycle in order to estimate mean temperature, amplitude, and phase at 159 points uniformly distributed over the region. The residuals are generally small (less than 2-degrees-C). The largest departures from this cycle are located either in the Brazil-Malvinas frontal region or in the southeastern part of the region. Other periods in SST variations are identified by means of periodograms of the 159 residual time series in which the annual cycle has been substracted. The periodograms show that a semiannual frequency signal is present at almost every location. The ratio of the semiannual amplitude to the annual amplitude increases southward from 0% at 30-degrees-S to reach up to 45% at 50-degrees-S. In the south the semiannual signal creates an asymmetry, and the resulting (total) annual cycle has a cold period (winter) longer than the warm one (summer). In the frontal region the annual and semiannual signals have an important interannual variation. This semiannual frequency is associated with the semiannual wave present in the atmospheric forcing of the southern hemisphere. Differential heating over the mid-latitude oceans and the high-latitude ice-covered Antarctic Continent has been suggested as the cause of this semiannual wave (Van Loon, 1967).