1. The Indian Ocean is a predominantly southern hemisphere ocean, large areas of
which are relatively unexplored, compared to the more travelled northern
hemisphere basins, resulting in a scarcity of both oceanographic and
meteorological data. It is therefore useful to use numerical models in order to
increase our understanding of the southern tropical Indian Ocean, through the
comparison of model fields with available observational data.
The dominant feature of the observed southern hemisphere circulation in the Indian
Ocean is the subtropical cyclonic (clockwise) gyre comprised of the westward
flowing South Equatorial Current (SEC) at 12°S to the south, the South Equatorial
Countercurrent to the north, and the East African Coastal Current in the west.