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Monsoon
About: Monsoon is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 16087 publications have been published within this topic receiving 599888 citations.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that narrow mountain ranges are an important organizing agent anchoring monsoon convection centers on the windward side of the Asian summer monsoon, which is in contrast to the widely held view that this convection is centered over the open ocean as implied by coarse-resolution datasets.
Abstract: The Asian summer monsoon is organized into distinct convection centers, but the mechanism for this organization is not well understood. Analysis of new satellite observations reveals that narrow mountain ranges are an important organizing agent anchoring monsoon convection centers on the windward side. The Bay of Bengal convection, in particular, features the heaviest precipitation on its eastern coast because of orographic lifting as the southwest monsoon impinges on the coastal mountains of Myanmar (also known as Burma). This is in contrast to the widely held view that this convection is centered over the open ocean as implied by coarse-resolution datasets, a view that would require an entirely different explanation for its formation. Narrow in width and modest in height (≤1 km), these mountains are hardly mentioned in conceptual depictions of the large-scale monsoon and poorly represented in global climate models. The numerical simulations of this study show that orographic rainbands are not a...
294 citations
Tongji University1, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology2, University of Hawaii at Manoa3, University of Minnesota4, Xi'an Jiaotong University5, National Center for Atmospheric Research6, Chinese Academy of Sciences7, Centre national de la recherche scientifique8, University of Wisconsin-Madison9, Peking University10
TL;DR: The second synthesis of the PAGES GM Working Group following the first synthesis “The Global Monsoon across Time Scales: coherent variability of regional monsoons” published in 2014 (Climate of the Past, 10, 2007-2052) as mentioned in this paper addresses driving mechanisms of global monsoon variability and outstanding issues in GM science.
293 citations
Max Planck Society1, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory2, National Center for Atmospheric Research3, Columbia University4, Met Office5, Environment Canada6, United States Naval Research Laboratory7, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory8, University of California, Los Angeles9, Bureau of Meteorology10, University of Hawaii11, Japan Meteorological Agency12
TL;DR: In this paper, an ensemble of twenty four coupled ocean-atmosphere models has been compared with respect to their performance in the tropical Pacific, and the performance of the annual mean state, the seasonal cycle and the interannual variability are investigated.
Abstract: An ensemble of twenty four coupled ocean-atmosphere models has been compared with respect to their performance in the tropical Pacific. The coupled models span a large portion of the parameter space and differ in many respects. The intercomparison includes TOGA (Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere)-type models consisting of high-resolution tropical ocean models and coarse-resolution global atmosphere models, coarse-resolution global coupled models, and a few global coupled models with high resolution in the equatorial region in their ocean components. The performance of the annual mean state, the seasonal cycle and the interannual variability are investigated. The primary quantity analysed is sea surface temperature (SST). Additionally, the evolution of interannual heat content variations in the tropical Pacific and the relationship between the interannual SST variations in the equatorial Pacific to fluctuations in the strength of the Indian summer monsoon are investigated. The results can be summarised as follows: almost all models (even those employing flux corrections) still have problems in simulating the SST climatology, although some improvements are found relative to earlier intercomparison studies. Only a few of the coupled models simulate the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in terms of gross equatorial SST anomalies realistically. In particular, many models overestimate the variability in the western equatorial Pacific and underestimate the SST variability in the east. The evolution of interannual heat content variations is similar to that observed in almost all models. Finally, the majority of the models show a strong connection between ENSO and the strength of the Indian summer monsoon.
292 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined possible changes in the frequency of rain events in India in terms of their duration and intensity per day, and found that the frequencies of moderate and low rain days considered over the entire country have significantly decreased in the last half century.
Abstract: [1] Daily gridded (1° × 1°) rainfall data prepared by the India Meteorological Department for the period 1951–2004 have been used in this study to examine possible changes in the frequency of rain events in India in terms of their duration and intensity per day. So far as the duration is concerned, a rain event is classified as short, long, dry, or prolonged dry spell. Similarly in terms of intensity, a rainy day is considered as low, moderate, or heavy. Changes in the frequency of these events have great relevance from the point of view of climate change. Threshold and limiting values for defining the heavy and moderate rain days are calculated in accordance with the gamma probability distribution. Results show that the frequencies of moderate and low rain days considered over the entire country have significantly decreased in the last half century. On the basis of the duration of rain events it is inferred that long spells show a significant decreasing trend over India as a whole while short and dry spells indicate an increasing tendency with 5% significance. The characteristics of rain events are also examined over six homogenous rainfall zones separately since the spatial distribution of rainfall over India shows large variability. In this study, the changes in the frequencies of different categories of rain events suggest weakening of the summer monsoon circulation over India. This hypothesis of a weakening of monsoon circulation is supported by significant reduction in the 850 hPa wind fields in the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalyzed data set.
292 citations
TL;DR: A review of seven outstanding issues on Mediterranean palaeoenvironments is presented in this article, related to the dominant orbital pacing of climate variability, the length of the interglacial vegetation succession, the influence of the African summer monsoon, the seasonality of precipitation during boreal insolation maxima, the moisture balance during glacial maxima and the appearance of the mediterranean sclerophyllous plants.
291 citations