VARIABILITY OF SURFACE METEOROLOGICAL PARAMETERS OVER THE ARABIAN SEA

The trends and periodicities of surface meteorological parameters (sea surface temperature, air temperature, cloudiness, wind speed and sea level pressure) over the western, central, eastern and southern Arabia n sea regions are studied for the period 1948 to 1972. From the trend analysis, it is observed that in general, most of the surface meteorol ogical parameters show a very gradual increase except sea surface wind s, which show marked increase. The spectra and coherence of these para meters are presented for the annual and semiannual periods. Analysis s hows that in addition to the dominant annual, semiannual and seasonal (four month) periodicities some parameters exhibit some energy at 2, 3 and 4 year cycles. An analysis of the relationship between different parameters shows that the sea surface temperature and air temperature are positively and significantly correlated over the study area. A sim ilar relationship is found between wind speed and cloudiness amount. W ind speed and cloudiness are negatively and significantly correlated w ith the mean sea level pressure over all the study areas.