Variation of Convective Activities Response to the Sea Surface Temperature over the Indonesia Maritime Continent

A previous study found that local Indonesian seas play a significant role in causing extreme precipitation and spread over the Maritime Continent during the anomalously wet dry season. However, the influence of sea surface temperature on convective rainfall still needs to be investigated. Here, we analyzed the response of convective activity to the sea surface temperature (SST) using monthly data of SST and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) derived from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) reanalysis 5th Generation (ERA5) with a spanning record from 2010 to 2019. The monthly variation shows that the significant response (60–80%) of convective activity to SST was initiated from May to October over mostly local Indonesian sea. The spatial correlation between SST and OLR shows that SST leads to OLR over the entire local sea except in the Arafura and Banda seas during May, which might correspond to the strengthening of meridional wind from the Pacific Ocean.