The United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF) organized a virtual session on “The Oceans and the Monsoon” on Thursday, June 25, 2020, from 5 p.m. to 6.15 p.m(IST). Mr Moulik D. Berkana, Cultural Affairs Officer, the U.S. Consulate General, Chennai, presented the opening remarks followed by a Special Address by Dr M. Rajeevan, Secretary to Government of India, Ministry of Earth Sciences, New Delhi.

Prof Amit Tandon served as one of the panellists in this. The other panellists of this webinar included Dr R Venkatesan (NIOT and Professional Excellence fellowship scholar, UMassD) and Shikha Singh ( Scientist-C at IITM and currently a member of Tandon Labs as a Fulbright Doctoral scholar with UMassD as the host institution).

The session was about how Oceans around India play a crucial role in bringing and sustaining Monsoons and how oceanic patterns should be used as an indicator for agriculture and policies. This session also addressed the challenges faced for predicting the onset of Monsoon and the amplitude of intraseasonal variations amidst the time that this seasonal phenomenon is currently active over the Indian Subcontinent.

A total of 1164 people registered and there were 599 attendees from India and USA.

One can find the recorded version of this webinar here.

From L to R: Ms Shikha Singh, Prof Amit Tandon, Dr. R. Venkatesan, Mr. Moulik Berkhana, and the Secretary MoES Dr. M. Rajeevan

Professor Amit Tandon and the rest of the lab had strong participation in the recently concluded Ocean Sciences Meeting at San Diego, CA. Spread across 6 days in mid-February, it was definitely a good experience for the group to be a part of this event by presenting their published/on-going work as well as attending lots of other talks from a plethora of topics being discussed. Following are the details of the talks/posters given by the lab members:

a) Monsoon Intra-seasonal oscillations in the Bay of Bengal: Amit Tandon and co-authors

b) Submesoscale temperature inversions in the Bay of Bengal during the winter monsoon: Sanjiv Ramachandran, Amit Tandon and co-authors

c) Atmospheric Cold Pools in the Bay of Bengal: A Fuzzy Logic Approach: Jared Buckley, Amit Tandon

d) Long Wave Measurement Corrections for the OMNI Buoy Network: Jossia Joseph, Amit Tandon and other co-authors

e) The 2018 Monsoon Onset from Ship-based Measurements across the Air-Sea Interface: Emily Shroyer, Amit Tandon and co-authors

f) Basin-scale Diapycnal Mixing Rates in the Bay of Bengal Inferred from Freshwater Balance: J Sree Lekha, Debasis Sengupta, Emily Shroyer and Amit Tandon.

g) Nutrient Supply Caused by Submesoscale and Microscale Mixing Processes in the Upstream Kuroshio: Takeyoshi Nagai, Amit Tandon and co-authors

h) The Barreirinhas Eddies Conundrum: Why Are These Super Anticyclones at Low Latitudes so Long-lived: Iury T Simoes-Sousa and co-authors

i) On the Role of Turbulent Mixing Produced by Vertical Shear Between the Brazil Current and the Intermediate Western Boundary Current by Caue Lazaneo and co-authors

j) On the variability of Arabian Sea mixing and its energetics: Shikha Singh and co-authors

k) On the Sea Surface Temperature variability and mesoscale dispersion in the Bay of Bengal during 2015 and 2019 monsoon as tracked by drifters: Siddhant Kerhalkar, Amit Tandon and co-authors

Dr Shroyer (L) and Prof Tandon (R) at Ocean Sciences Meeting 2020

Sid with his poster at Ocean Sciences Meeting 2020

Iury (L) and Caue(R) with their posters at Ocean Sciences Meeting 2020

Congratulations to Jared Buckley, who successfully defended his PhD Thesis: “A new model of satellite-derived near-surface currents, the impact of lateral advection and a fuzzy logic approach to observing cold pools in the Bay of Bengal” on December 18, 2019.

Front Row: (from L-R) Caue, Prof Tandon, Shikha and Dr Venkatesan Back Row: (from L-R) Sid, Iury, Jared and Patrick

Tandon Lab visited Brown University on November 21, 2019 for a joint group meeting with Fox-Kemper Research group. This joint meeting involved knowing about the work being carried out by the members of each group which was followed by a quick brain-storming session.

Tandon Lab conducted an Air-Sea Interaction Day on October 16, 2019 and hosted Prof Debasis Sengupta (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore), Dr Robert Weller (WHOI), Dr Amala Mahadevan (WHOI) and Dr R Venkatesan (NIOT and Fulbright Flex awardee, UMassD) at SMAST, UMass Dartmouth. There were talks given by the members as well as guests followed by a long meeting about some of the future work.

(From L-R) Juliana, Caue, Dr Mahadevan (WHOI), Shikha, Dr Weller (WHOI), Jared, Iury, Dr Venkatesan (NIOT), Prof Sengupta (IISc), Prof Tandon, and Sid

Prof Tandon presented a seminar on “Sub-mesoscale processes in the Bay of Bengal” at Graduate School of Oceanography at University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI on October 04, 2019. The seminar was attended by some of the members of the lab as well. This seminar was also followed by a short visit to the aquarium situated at GSO, URI

(From L-R) Sid, Shikha, Caue, Aakash (Brown University), Brodie (Brown University), Sarah (seminar organiser at URI), Dr Venkatesan, Luis (seminar organiser at URI) and Prof Tandon

(From L-R) Caue, Shikha, Prof Tandon and Dr Venkatesan with URI’s R/V Endeavor in the background