Monsoon

About: Monsoon is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 16087 publications have been published within this topic receiving 599888 citations.

The Effect of Eurasian Snow Cover on the Indian Monsoon

Abstract: The authors successfully model and simulate the observed evidence that anomalously high winter/spring Eurasian snow cover is linked to weak rainfall in the following summer Indian monsoon. It is shown that excessive snow cover in February reduces June to September precipitation over India. The excessive snow cover is associated with a weak monsoon characterized by higher sea level pressure over India, a weaker Somali jet, weaker lower tropospheric westerlies, and weaker upper tropospheric easterlies. The weak monsoon is also associated with weaker secondary circulations. The remote response to excessive Eurasian snow cover is to reduce the strength of trade winds in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Energy used in melting excessive snow reduces the surface temperature over a broad region centered around the Tibetan Plateau. Reduced surface sensible heat flux reduces the midtropospheric temperature over the Tibetan Plateau. The result is to reduce the midtropospheric meridional temperature gra...

Atmospheric Controls on Soil Moisture-Boundary Layer Interactions. Part II: Feedbacks within the Continental United States

Abstract: The CTP-HIlow framework for describing atmospheric controls on soil moisture‐boundary layer interactions is described in a companion paper, Part I. In this paper, the framework is applied to the continental United States to investigate how differing atmospheric regimes influence local feedbacks between the land surface and the atmosphere. The framework was developed with a one-dimensional boundary layer model and is based on two measures of atmospheric thermodynamic properties: the convective triggering potential (CTP), a measure of the temperature lapse rate between approximately 1 and 3 km above the ground surface, and a low-level humidity index, HIlow. These two measures are used to distinguish between three types of early-morning atmospheric conditions: those favoring moist convection over dry soils, those favoring moist convection over wet soils, and those that will allow or prevent deep convective activity, independent of the surface flux partitioning. Analyses of multiyear CTP-HIlow scatterplots from radiosonde stations across the contiguous 48 United States reveal that during the summer months (June, July, and August) positive feedbacks between soil moisture and moist convection are likely in much of the eastern half of the country. Over the western half of the country, atmospheric conditions and the likelihood of moist convection are largely determined by oceanic influences, and land surface conditions in the summer are unlikely to impact convective triggering. The only area showing a potential negative feedback is in the dryline and monsoon region of the arid Southwest. This potential arises because of the topography of this and surrounding regions. A relatively narrow band of stations lies in between the eastern and western portions of the country, in some years behaving like the stations to the west and in other years behaving like the stations to the east.

Coupling between Northward-Propagating, Intraseasonal Oscillations and Sea Surface Temperature in the Indian Ocean*

Abstract: Using a hybrid atmosphere‐ocean coupled model, it is shown that during the boreal summer northwardpropagating, intraseasonal oscillations (NPISOs) are strongly coupled to the underlying sea surface temperature (SST) in the Indian Ocean sector. On the one hand, the intraseasonal atmospheric convection changes the SST through solar radiation, latent heat flux, and mixed-layer entrainment; on the other, the induced SST fluctuations feed back to affect the intraseasonal convection. The preferential northward, rather than southward, propagation of boreal summer ISOs in the Indian Ocean is partially explained by an interaction among the summer-mean climate state, the atmospheric disturbances, and the ocean surface temperature. A solution to an atmosphere-only model forced with daily SST produces much stronger NPISOs than a similar solution forced with monthly mean SST (AMIP-type run). The atmosphere-only model, however, even when it is forced by daily SST from the coupled model (with a small amount of noise in the initial and/or boundary conditions), is unable to reproduce the NPISOs in the coupled case. In the coupled system, intraseasonal SST anomalies are forced by intraseasonal atmospheric convection, and hence are in quadrature with the convection. In the stand-alone atmospheric model, however, SST acts only as a boundary forcing, and the resultant atmospheric convection has almost the same phase with the underlying SST. One consequence is that the intensity of the SST-forced intraseasonal convection in the stand-alone atmospheric model is considerably weaker than in the coupled model. Finally, solutions indicate that the northward movement of the off-equatorial convection in the northern Indian Ocean is more closely related to local intraseasonal SST anomalies than to the equatorial eastward-moving Madden‐Julian oscillation: Positive (negative) SST anomalies in the northern Indian Ocean lead the active (break) phases of the intraseasonal convection by about 2 pentads (10 days). Therefore, intraseasonal SST anomalies in the northern Indian Ocean are potentially a useful index to forecast active (break) spells of the south Asian summer monsoon.

Monsoon precipitation in the AMIP runs

Abstract: We present an analysis of the seasonal precipitation associated with the African, Indian and the Australian-Indonesian monsoon and the interannual variation of the Indian monsoon simulated by 30 atmospheric general circulation models undertaken as a special diagnostic subproject of the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) The seasonal migration of the major rainbelt observed over the African region, is reasonably well simulated by almost all the models The Asia West Pacific region is more complex because of the presence of warm oceans equatorward of heated continents Whereas some models simulate the observed seasonal migration of the primary rainbelt, in several others this rainbelt remains over the equatorial oceans in all seasons Thus, the models fall into two distinct classes on the basis of the seasonal variation of the major rainbelt over the Asia West Pacific sector, the first (class I) are models with a realistic simulation of the seasonal migration and the major rainbelt over the continent in the boreal summer; and the second (class II) are models with a smaller amplitude of seasonal migration than observed The mean rainfall pattern over the Indian region for July-August (the peak monsoon months) is even more complex because, in addition to the primary rainbelt over the Indian monsoon zone (the monsoon rainbelt) and the secondary one over the equatorial Indian ocean, another zone with significant rainfall occurs over the foothills of Himalayas just north of the monsoon zone Eleven models simulate the monsoon rainbelt reasonably realistically Of these, in the simulations of five belonging to class I, the monsoon rainbelt over India in the summer is a manifestation of the seasonal migration of the planetary scale system However in those belonging to class II it is associated with a more localised system In several models, the oceanic rainbelt dominates the continental one On the whole, the skill in simulation of excess/deficit summer monsoon rainfall over the Indian region is found to be much larger for models of class I than II, particularly for the ENSO associated seasons Thus, the classification based on seasonal mean patterns is found to be useful for interpreting the simulation of interannual variation The mean rainfall pattern of models of class I is closer to the observed and has a higher pattern correlation coefficient than that of class II This supports Sperber and Palmer’s (1996) result of the association of better simulation of interannual variability with better simulation of the mean rainfall pattern The hypothesis, that the skill of simulation of the interannual variation of the all-India monsoon rainfall in association with ENSO depends upon the skill of simulation of the seasonal variation over the Asia West Pacific sector, is supported by a case in which we have two versions of the model where NCEP1 is in class II and NCEP2 is in class I The simulation of the interannual variation of the local response over the central Pacific as well as the all-India monsoon rainfall are good for NCEP2 and poor for NCEP1 Our results suggest that when the model climatology is reasonably close to observations, to achieve a realistic simulation of the interannual variation of all-India monsoon rainfall associated with ENSO, the focus should be on improvement of the simulation of the seasonal variation over the Asia West Pacific sector rather than further improvement of the simulation of the mean rainfall pattern over the Indian region

An objective definition of the Indian summer monsoon season and a new perspective on the ENSO–monsoon relationship

Abstract: The concept of an interannually varying Indian summer monsoon season is introduced here, considering that the duration of the primary driving of the Indian monsoon – the large-scale meridional gradient of the deep tropospheric heat source – may vary from one year to another. Onset (withdrawal) is defined as the day when the tropospheric heat source shifts from south to north (north to south). This physical principle leads to a new thermodynamic index of the seasonal mean monsoon. While the traditional measure of seasonal rainfall, averaged from 1 June to 30 September, indicates a breakdown of the ENSO–monsoon relationship in recent decades, it is argued that this breakdown is partly due to the inappropriate definition of a fixed monsoon season. With a new physically based definition of the seasonal mean, the ENSO–monsoon relationship has remained steady over the decades. El Nino (La Nina) events contract (expand) the season, and thus decrease (increase) the seasonal mean monsoon by setting up persistent negative (positive) tropospheric temperature (TT) anomalies over the southern Eurasian region. Thus, we propose a new pathway, whereby the Indian summer monsoon could be influenced by remote climatic phenomena via modification of TT over Eurasia. Diagnostics of the onset and withdrawal processes suggest that onset delay is due to the enhanced adiabatic zubsidence that inhibits vertical mixing of sensible heating from warm landmass during the pre-monsoon months. On the other hand, the major factor that determines whether the withdrawal is early or late is the horizontal advective cooling. Most of the late (early) onsets and early (late) withdrawals are associated with El Nino (La Nina). This link between the ENSO and the monsoon is realized through vertical and horizontal advections associated with the stationary waves in the upper troposphere set up by the tropical ENSO heating.