“…At intraseasonal time scales, the Banda Sea sea surface temperature (SST) is modulated by the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO; Napitu et al, 2015;Pei et al, 2021). The upper ocean circulation in the Banda Sea is controlled by seasonally reversing monsoonal winds from the northwest during the austral summer and from the southeast during the austral winter (Gordon & Susanto, 2001;Ilahude & Gordon, 1996;Ismail et al, 2023;Kida et al, 2019;Sprintall & Liu, 2005;Zhu et al, 2019). The southeast monsoon drives basin-wide wind-induced mixing (Thomas et al, 2003), strong outflow through the Timor Passage and into the Indian Ocean (Kida et al, 2019), and quasi-stationary anticyclonic eddy in the southwest boundary of the Banda Sea (Liang et al, 2019;Zhu et al, 2019).…”