SUMMER MONSOON RESPONSE OF THE NORTHERN SOMALI CURRENT, 1995

Preliminary results on the development of the northern Somali Current regime and Great Whirl during the summer monsoon of 1995 are reported. They are based on the water mass and current profiling observations f rom three shipboard surveys of R/V Meteor and on the time series from a moored current-meter and ADCP array. The monsoon response of the GW was deep-reaching, to more than 1000m, involving large deep transports . The northern Somali Current was found to be disconnected from the in terior Arabian Sea in latitude range 4 degrees N - 12 degrees N in bot h, water mass properties and current fields. Instead, communication do minantly occurs through the passages between Socotra and the African c ontinent. From moored stations in the main passage a northward through flow from the Somali Current to the Gulf of Aden of about 5 Sv was det ermined for the summer monsoon of 1995.