Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol.

2, 023543 (24 October 2008)

Seasonal and interannual variability of SeaWiFS-

derived chlorophyll-a concentrations in waters off the
southwest coast of India, 1998-2003

Kailasam Muni Krishna

Dept of Meteorology and Oceanography, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India
E-mail: kailasam15@yahoo.co.in

Abstract. Seasonal and interannual variability in satellite-derived estimates of near-surface

chlorophyll-a concentrations were examined in the four regions off the southwest coast of
India from 1998-2003. Wind-induced upwelling predominates in late spring and summer,
coinciding with the maximum in solar radiation, leading to increased accumulations of
phytoplankton biomass. Chlorophyll concentrations varied from 2 to 10 mg/m3 and were
generally lower in January-April and maximal in May-September. Chlorophyll concentrations
along the coast followed a similar seasonal pattern (ranging from 0.5 to 4 mg/m3); however,
concentrations were always greater on the Trivendrum and Cochin coast compared to the
Calicut and Mangalore coast. The southwest coast is often cloud covered; data density maps
provide an index of confidence in the ‘regional’ applicability of the summary statistics. One
consequence of the 1997-1998 El Nino appears to be a reduction in chlorophyll concentration
off Trivendrum and Cochin in 1998. An increased frequency of El Nino events may lead to a
reduction in offshore carbon in this dynamic upwelling region. Six-month median chlorophyll
concentrations were maximal in 2002 off Trivendrum and Cochin.

Keywords: coastal upwelling, southwest coast of India, chlorophyll concentration.

1 INTRODUCTION
Sea waters off the southwest coast (Fig 1) are characterized by high rates of primary
production, fueled by upwelling of nutrient-rich water, that support economically important
fisheries. Over the last four decades, a number of field programs have explored phytoplankton
distributions and rates of primary production in waters overlying the continental margins off
Trivendrum, Cochin, Calicut, and Mangalore coasts [1-12]. The Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-
view Sensor (SeaWiFS), launched in late 1997, provides a way to explore seasonal and inter-
annual variability in the distribution of surface chlorophyll in greater spatial and temporal
detail over the study region. Because satellite ocean color measurements can also provide
estimates of local rates of primary production, these remotely sensed measurements are
critical to our understanding of carbon cycling in this dynamics upwelling regime.
Southwesterly winds begin to dominate the coastal wind field in late spring and persist
through the summer, leading to seasonally intense offshore Ekman transport and coastal
upwelling that are common to the southwest coast of India [13]. The upwelling of nutrient-
rich water into the euphotic zone provides the fuel that drives the intense biological
production that is observed. Wind favorable to upwelling, variations in local cloud cover
combined with a tropical latitude cycle of solar insolation, and inter-annual patterns in annual
precipitation and subsequent river discharge are a few of physical processes that work in
concert to affect the observed distributions of in situ properties. The primary goal of this
study was to determine multi-year chlorophyll-a variability in the coastal waters off
Trivendrum, Cochin, Calicut and Mangalore from 1998-2003.

© 2008 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers [DOI: 10.1117/1.3026540]

Received 28 Jul 2008; accepted 19 Oct 2008; published 24 Oct 2008 [CCC: 19313195/2008/$25.00]
Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol. 2, 023543 (2008) Page 1
 Fig. 1. Map of the southwest coast of India.

2 DATA AND METHODOLOGY

The study region off the southwest coast of India extends from 7°N to 16°N and 70°E to
78°E. Weekly SeaWiFS image of chlorophyll-a concentration were taken from 1998-2003.
Quantile-based statistics were used exclusively to describe the location and dispersion
characteristics of chlorophyll-a distributions and observations were pooled over discrete
space/time domains. The median was used to summarize the average value of each
distribution. The median has the added advantage, over the geometric mean, of being robust
to anomalously high or low chlorophyll retrievals that may be present. Next, the difference
between the 75th and 25th percentiles, also known as the inter-quartile range (IQR), was used
as a measure of dispersion (i.e variability) for each distribution and is analogous to the
standard deviation [14]. To facilitate the comparison of variability within and among
subregions, the IQR from each distribution was scaled by its corresponding median. The
spread of a distribution relative to its location provides a unitless measure of relative
variability, similar in interpretation to the coefficient of variation (standard deviation/mean).
Quantile-based estimates of skewness (Eq. (1)) were calculated [14]:
Skewness = ( P75 + P25 − 2 P50 ) ( P75 − P25 ) (1)
where subscripts represent percentiles from the distribution under consideration. Values of
skewness range from -1, for extreme left skewness, to 0 for a symmetric distribution, to 1 for
extreme right skewness. The quantile-based measures of dispersion and skewness also have
the advantage of being robust to anomalous chlorophyll-a retrievals in the tails of the
distributions.

3 RESULTS
It is possible to define the area of upwelling by different parameters. Sea surface temperature,
ocean color, and corresponding SSC, primary production as well as density, salinity or
nutrient concentration can be used to discriminate upwelled water. Thus, the definition of the
extent of upwelling influence is subject to the threshold of the respective parameter. In this
work, the high chlorophyll-a zone (HCZ) is studied and in accordance with preceding studies,
a threshold of 0.5 mg/m3 SSC is used for the HCZ [15]. This perspective focuses more on the

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol. 2, 023543 (2008) Page 2

 biological response to the higher nutrient supply than on the physical upwelling itself; a
distinction is not made between elevated nutrient concentration in upwelled water and that
resulting from summer mixing of near surface waters.

3.1 Seasonal chlorophyll trends

Sea surface chlorophyll-a concentrations (here after SSC) along the southwest coast of India
during southwest monsoon varies from 0.5 to 9 mg/m3 (Table 1). In 1998 – 2003
concentrations were generally lower in January – April at all stations along the coast and
maximal in May – September of each year. SSCs are excess of 6 mg/m3 was only observed in
the months of July-August 2000, August 2002, June, July, September 2003 at Trivendrum
coast. The variations in SSC in time series during relatively long periods of upwelling along
the southwest coast of India in both southwest and northeast monsoon period shows seasonal
changes.
Table 1. Values for the average number of observations per pixel corresponding to traditional calendar
months.

3.2 Inter-annual variability of chlorophyll-a (6-month medians)

As described in previous section satellite SSC data indicates that there were distinctive
southwest and northeast monsoons along the coast and the timing and magnitude were
different among the areas (Fig 2). The data for six years showed similar seasonal changes of
SSC, including southwest and northeast monsoons chlorophyll concentrations. However there
are differences in the timing and magnitude of chlorophyll concentration year by year. During
southwest monsoon the chlorophyll concentration along the southwest coast of India started
increase around last week/first week of May/June every year, this is due to the coastal
upwelling. The features of chlorophyll of each year are shown in Fig 2. The SSC was earlier
in 1999 and 2002 southwest monsoon period. In 1999 appeared in the first week of June in
most of the southwest coast of India and in 2002 also it occurred in the first week of June,

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol. 2, 023543 (2008) Page 3

 particularly in the India tip. On the other hand, the chlorophyll concentrations in 2000 at the
southern area and near Trivendrum and Cochin coast appeared in July, later than other years.
In all 6 years ‘high’ SSC (>1.0 mg/m3) were found on the coasts of Trivendrum, Cochin,
Calicut during southwest monsoon period. The concentrations of chlorophyll were higher on
the Trivendrum than on the other regions (Table 1). The greatest difference between the two
regions occurred in 2002, when the Trivendrum chlorophyll concentration was ~ 40% greater
than that observed on the other regions. Yearly median SSCs in Trivendrum were greater than
all the remaining stations along the southwest coast of India for all 6-years.

Fig. 2. Weekly Chl a concentration at different stations along the southwest coast of
India during 1998 – 2003.

3.3 Temporal and spatial variation in chlorophyll-a

Estimates of normalized variability for waters off west coast of India show greatest variability
in waters overlying the Trivendrum, Cochin and Calicut (Fig 3). Values for the ratio of
IQR/Median typically 0.5 in January – April of each year and rose steadily throughout the
southwest monsoon season. In general, variability was minimal over the Mangalore coastal
waters and very little seasonal variations was seen in the IQR/Median rations for the entire
coastal region of southwest coast of India. Estimates of skewness for each of the month log-
normalized distributions of SSC is used to asses the assumption of log-normality, and are also
used as an additional measure of variability (Table 2). Skewness values in excess of ±0.2
correspond to distributions where the difference between the 75th and 50th percentile is 1.5
times as large as the difference between the 25th and 50th percentile (and vice versa). Off
Mangalore had relatively few instances of skewness in excess of the ±0.2 range, suggesting
minimal departures from log-normality (to the extent that log-normality can be assessed by
the skewness test statistic alone). Along the southwest coast of India departures from log-
normality is more common in April – June of each year, but the tendency is for the
distributions to be positively skewed in September in each of the 6 years.

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol. 2, 023543 (2008) Page 4

 On the Trivendrum, Cochin and Calicut coastal waters an increase in the IQR/Median
ration was observed as the season progressed (Fig 3). If we assume that sufficient data density
was obtained to assure that the summary statistics calculated were representative of the entire
spatio-temporal domain, one interpretation for this increase in the IQR/Median ratio is an
increase in the offshore transport of higher chlorophyll concentrations due to coastal
upwelling. As relatively high concentrations are advected offshore they mix with the lower
biomass waters more typical of slope and oceanic regions. Where these higher chlorophyll
filaments extend out into lower chlorophyll waters, a zone of increased variability would
develop. The skewness statistic test (Table 2) can be used to gauge the relative location of this
zone of increased variability. Positive skewness values indicate distributions dominated by
low chlorophyll concentrations and intrusions of higher chlorophyll would be manifested as
elongated tails in the high chlorophyll regions of the distribution, and vice versa. On the
Trivendrum, Cochin and Calicut slope we observed a tendency for the distributions to be
positively skewed in southwest monsoon period, suggesting that overall the region is oceanic
in nature and parcels of high chlorophyll water develop within, or more through the region.
Overall chlorophyll concentration levels were significantly different among the sites (Fig
3), we observed the chlorophyll concentration at Mangalore are low when compared with,
Cochin, Calicut and Trivendrum during southwest monsoon season. Seasonal patterns in
chlorophyll concentrations also differ among sites. At Trivendrum, Cochin and Calicut, peaks
in chlorophyll concentration occurred during southwest monsoon of each year. During
upwelling season, all major peaks in the chlorophyll concentration occurred concurrent with 2
conditions: the water column presented a strong vertical gradient in temperature; and surface
waters at Trivendrum had begun to cool after a rapid drop in SST. Note, however, that not all
periods presenting these physical characteristics lead to a high concentration, which
underscores the complexity of the system and suggests that biological responses to upwelling
may vary from one site to another.
Table 2. Skewness statistic test calculated on Chlorophyll for each of the ten sub-regions.

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol. 2, 023543 (2008) Page 5

 Fig. 3. IQR / Median ratios for the four subregions southwest coast of India.

4 CONCLUSIONS
Historical patterns of the cross shelf variability of the chlorophyll-a, derived from Coastal
Zone Colour Scanner dataset, have been well documented for the entire west coast of India
(Banse, 1987). In part, SeaWiFS dataset extends this work and clearly illustrates significant
seasonal and inter-annual variations in surface SSC over the entire region of interest,
especially with regard to the coastal upwelling phenomena. The magnitude of and pathways
for carbon sequestration in the deep ocean remain major questions relevant to the role of the
ocean carbon cycle in climate change. Net carbon sequestration depends on the transfer of
primary productivity from the euphotic zone to the deep ocean. One consequence of the 1997-
1998 El Nino appears to be a reduction in surface chlorophyll concentrations, in coastal
waters off Trivendrum [16-17]. I speculate that the increase frequency of El Nino events may
lead to a reduction in offshore carbon and sequestration.

Acknowledgment
I thank to SeaWiFS Project of NASA GSFC for SeaWiFS data. I also thankful to IOCCG
people for their fruitful discussions to improve the quality of the manuscript. The author is
grateful for the critical and valuable comments made by two anonymous reviewers.

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