Author Version of : Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, vol.125(6); 2020; Article no: e2019JC015836 Back-to-back occurrence of tropical cyclones in the Arabian Sea during October- November 2015: Causes and responses Riyanka Roy Chowdhury1, S. Prasanna Kumar2*, Jayu Narvekar2, Arun Chakraborty1 1 Centre for Oceans, Rivers, Atmosphere and Land Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, West Bengal, India 2CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography Dona Paula, Goa-403 004, India *Corresponding author: S. Prasanna Kumar (
[email protected]) Abstract In the Arabian Sea, two extremely severe cyclonic storms occurred back-to-back during October- November 2015. Using a suite of ocean and atmospheric data we examined the upper ocean responses of tropical cyclones Chapala and Megh, the latter originated immediately after the dissipation of the former. Cyclones Chapala and Megh cooled the sea surface by 1.5oC and 1.0oC respectively, which was also captured by Bio-Argo float in the vicinity of their tracks. The cyclone- induced chlorophyll-a enhancement was 6 and 2 times respectively from their pre-cyclone value of 0.36 and 0.30 mg/m3, while the net primary productivity showed an increase of 5.8 and 1.7 times respectively from the pre-cyclone values of 496.26 and 518.63 mg C m-2 day-1 after the passage of Chapala and Megh. The CO2 flux showed a 6-fold and 2-fold increase respectively compared to the pre-cyclone value of 2.69-3.58 and 6.78 mmol m-2 day-1. We show that the anomalous co-occurrence of the positive phase of Indian Ocean dipole and the strong El Niño supported large-scale warming in the western Arabian Sea.