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The Bay of Bengal (BoB) plays a fundamental role in controlling the weather systems that make up the South Asian summer monsoon system. In particular,the southern BoB has cooler sea surface temperature (SST) that influence ocean-atmosphere interaction and impact on the monsoon. Compared to the southeast, the southwestern BoB is cooler, more saline, receives much less rain, and is influenced by the Summer Monsoon Current(SMC). To examine the impact of these features on the monsoon, the BoB Boundary Layer Experiment (BoBBLE) was jointly undertaken by India and the UK during June–July 2016. Physical and bio-geochemical observations were made using a CTD, five ocean gliders, a uCTD, a VMP, two ADCPs, Argo floats, drifting buoys, meteorological sensors and upper air radiosonde balloons. The observations were made along a zonal section at 8◦N between 85.3◦E and 89◦E with a 10-day time series at 89◦E, 8◦N. This paper presents the new observed features of the southern BoB from the BoBBLE field program, supported by satellite data. Key results from the BoBBLE field campaign show the Sri Lanka Dome and the SMC in different stages of their seasonal evolution and two freshening events during which salinity decreased in the upper layer leading to the formation of thick barrier layers. BoBBLE observations were taken during a suppressed phase of the intraseasonal oscillation; they captured in detail the warming of the ocean mixed layer and preconditioning of the atmosphere to convection.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process agreed in Paris to limit global surface temperature rise to ‘well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’. But what period is ‘pre-industrial’? Some-what remarkably, this is not defined within the UNFCCC’s many agreements and protocols. Nor is it defined in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) in the evaluation of when particular temperature levels might be reached because no robust definition of the period exists. Here we discuss the important factors to consider when defining a pre-industrial period, based on estimates of historical radiative forcings and the availability of climate observations. There is no perfect period, but we suggest that 1720-1800 is the most suitable choice when discussing global temperature limits. We then estimate the change in global average temperature since pre-industrial using a range of approaches based on observations, radiative forcings, global climate model simulations and proxy evidence. Our assessment is that this pre-industrial period was likely 0.55–0.80°C cooler than 1986-2005 and that 2015 was likely the first year in which global average temperature was more than 1°C above pre-industrial levels. We provide some recommendations for how this assessment might be improved in future and suggest that reframing temperature limits with a modern baseline would be inherently less uncertain and more policy-relevant.