Abstract
This paper introduces an objective definition of local onset and demise of the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) at the native grid of the Indian Meteorological Department’s rainfall analysis based on more than 100 years of rain gauge observations. The variability of the local onset/demise of the ISM is shown to be closely associated with the All India averaged rainfall onset/demise. This association is consistent with the corresponding evolution of the slow large-scale reversals of upper air and ocean variables that raise the hope of predictability of local onset and demise of the ISM. The local onset/demise of the ISM also show robust internannual variations associated with El Nino and the Southern Oscillation and Indian Ocean dipole mode. It is also shown that the early monsoon rains over northeast India has a predictive potential for the following seasonal anomalies of rainfall and seasonal length of the monsoon over rest of India.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alessandri A, Borrelli A, Cherchi A, Materia S, Navarra A, Lee JY., Wang B (2015) Prediction of Indian summer monsoon onset using dynamical sub-seasonal forecasts: effects of realistic initialization of the atmosphere. Mon Weather Rev 143:778–791
Ananthakrishnan R, Acharya UR, Ramakrishnan AR, 1967 On the criteria for declaring the onset of the southwest monsoon over Kerala. IMD forecasting manual, No. IV-18.1
Ananthakrishnan R, Srinivasan V, Ramakrishnan AR, Jambunathan R (1968) Synoptic features associated with onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala, Forecast Manual, vol IV-18.2. Indian Meteorological Department, Chennai
Ashfaq M, Rastogi D, Mei R, Touma D, Leung LR (2016) Sources of errors in the simulation of South Asian summer monsoon in the CMIP5 GCMs. Clim Dyn 49:193–223
Bansod SD, Singh SV, Kriplani RH (1991) The relationship of monsoon onset with subsequent rainfall over India. Int J Climatol 11:809–817
Boos WR, Kuang Z (2010) Dominant control of the South Asian monsoon by orographic insulation versus plateau heating. Nature 463:218–222
Boos WR, Kuang Z (2013) Sensitivity of the South Asian monsoon to elevated and non-elevated heating. Sci Rep 3:1192. doi:10.1038/srep01192
Chakraborty A, Nanjundiah RS, Srinivasan J (2006) Theoretical aspects of the onset of Indian summer monsoon from perturbed orography simulations in a GCM. Ann Geophys 24:2075–2089
Efron B, Tibshirani RJ, 1993: An Introduction to the Bootstrap: Chapman and Hall, 436 p 312
Fasullo J, Webster PJ (2003) A hydrological definition of Indian monsoon onset and withdrawal. J Climate 16:3200–3211
Gadgil S, Gadgil S, 2006: The Indian Monsoon, GDP and Agriculture, Economic and Political Weekly, pp 4887–4895
Gadgil S, Guruprasad A, Srinivasan J (1992) Systematic bias in the NOAA outgoing longwave radiation dataset? J Climate 5:868–875
Gine X, Townsend RM, Vickery J, 2008: Rational expectations? Evidence from planting decisions in Semi-Arid India. Working paper No. 166, World Bank, Washington D. C., pp 41. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTFR/Resources/GineTownsendVickery0808.pdf
Goswami BN, Sengupta D (2003) A note on the deficiency of NCEP/NCAR reanalysis surface winds over the equatorial Indian Ocean. J Geophys Res 108:3124. doi:10.1029/2002JC001497 C4
Goswami BN, Xavier PK (2005) ENSO control on the south Asian monsoon through the length of the rainy season. Geophys Res Lett 32:L18717. doi:10.1029/2005GL023216
Jain SK, Kumar V, Saharia M (2013) Analysis of rainfall and temperature trends in the northeast India. Int J Climatol 33:968–978. doi:10.1002/joc.3483
Joseph PV, Sooraj KP, Rajan CK (2006) The summer monsoon onset process over South Asia and an objective method for the date of monsoon onset over Kerala. Int J Climatol 26:1871–1893
Joseph S, Sahai AK, Abhilash S, Chattopadhyay R, Borah N, Mapes BE, Rajeevan M, Kumar A (2015) Development and evaluation of an objective criterion for the real-time prediction of Indian summer monsoon onset in a coupled model framework. J Clim 28:6234–6248
Krishnakumar V, Lau KM (1998) Possible role of symmetric instability in the onset and abrupt transition of the Asian monsoon. J Meteorol Soc Japan 76:363–383
Krishnamurti TN, Ardanay P, Ramanathan Y, Pasch R (1981) On the onset vortex of the summer monsoon. Mon Weather Rev 109:344–363. doi:10.1175/1520-0493(1981)1092.0.CO;2
Krishnamurti TN, Dubey S, Kumar V, Deepa R, Bhardwaj A (2017) Scale Interaction during an extreme rain event over South-East India. QJR Meteorol Soc Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1002/qj.3016
Lindzen RS, Farrell B, Rosenthal AJ (1983) Absolute barotropic instability and monsoon depressions. J Atmos Sci 40:1178–1184
Loschnigg J, Webster PJ (2000) A coupled ocean-atmosphere system of SST regulation for the Indian Ocean. J Clim 13(19):3342–3360. doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2000)0132.0.CO;2
Lu E, Zeng X, Jiang Z, Wang Y, Zhang Q (2009) Precipitation and precipitable water: Their temporal-spatial behaviors and use in determining monsoon onsoon/retreat and monsoon regions. J Geophys Res (atmospheres) 114. doi:10.1029/2009JD012146
Lucas-Picher P, Christensen JH, Saeed F, Kumar P, Asharaf S, Ahrens B, Wiltshire AJ, Jacob D, Hagemann S, 2011: Can regional climate models represent the Indian Monsoon? J Hydrometeor 117 (5): 849{868. doi:10.1175/2011JHM1327.1
Misra V, Pantina P, Chan SC (2012) A comparative study of the Indian summer monsoon hydroclimate and its variations in three reanalyses. Climate Dyn 39:1149–1168. doi:10.1007/s00382-012-1319-y
Misra V, Bhardwaj A, Noska R (2017) Understanding the Variations of the Length and the Seasonal Rainfall Anomalies of the Indian Summer Monsoon. J Climate 30:1753–1763. doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0501.1
Moron V, Robertson AW, (2014): Interannual variability of Indian summer monsoon rainfall onset date at local scale. Int J Climatol 34(4). doi:10.1002/joc.3745
Noska R, Misra V (2016) Characterizing the onset and demise of the Indian Summer Monsoon. Geophys Res Lett 43:4547–4554. doi:10.1002/2016GL068409
Pai DS, Rajeevan M (2007) Indian summer monsoon onset: variability and prediction. Indian Meteorological Department, Chennai
Pai DS, Sridhar L, Rajeevan M, Sreejith OP, Satbhai NS, Mukhopadhyay B (2014a) Development of a new high spatial resolution (0.25° × 0.25°) long period (1901–2010) daily gridded rainfall data set over India and its comparison with existing data sets over the region. Mausam 65(1):1–18
Pai DS, Sridhar L, Badwaik MR, Rajeevan M (2014b) Analysis of the daily rainfall events over India using a new long period (1901–2010) high resolution (0.25° × 0.25°) gridded rainfall data set. Climate Dyn 45(3–4). doi:10.1007/s00382-014-2307-1
Poli P, Hersbach H, Dee DP, Berrisford P, et al (2016): ERA-20C: An atmospheric reanalysis of the twentieth century. J. Climate. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0556.1
Rosenzweig M, Binswanger HP (1993) Wealth, Weather Risk and the Composition and Profitability of Agricultural Investments. Econ J 103(1):56–78
Saha S et al (2010) The NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 91(8):1015–1057. doi:10.1175/2010BAMS3001.1
Shah R, Mishra V (2014) Evaluation of the reanalysis products for the monsoon season droughts in India. J Hydromet 15:1575–1591
Sperber KR, Annamalai H (2014) The use of fractional accumulated precipitation for the evaluation of the annual cycle of monsoons. Climate dynamics 43(12):3219–3244
Tomas R, Webster P (1997) The role of inertial instability in determining the location and strength of near-equatorial convection. Q J R Meteorol Soc 123:1445–1482
Waliser DE, Shi Z, Lazante JR, Oort AH (1999) The Hadley circulation: assessing NCEP/NCAR reanalysis and sparse in-situ estimates. Clim Dyn 15:719–735
Walker T, Ryan J (1990) Village and Household Economics in Indias Semi-Arid Tropics. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore
Wang B, LinHo (2002) Rainy season of the Asia-Pacific summer monsoon. J Climate 15:386–398
Wang B, Ding Q, Joseph PV (2009) Objective definition of the Indian summer monsoon onset. J Clim 22(12):3303–3316. doi:10.1175/2008JCLI2675.1
Webster PJ (2000) The coupled monsoon system. In: Wang B (ed) The Asian Monsoon. Springer, New York
Webster PJ (2013) Improve weather forecasts for the developing world. Nature. doi: 10.1038/493017a
Webster PJ, Magana VO, Palmer TN, Shukla J, Tomas RA, Yanai MU, Yasunari T (1998) Monsoons: Processes, predictability, and the prospects for prediction. J Geophys Res 103(C7):14451–14510
Wyrtki K (1973) An equatorial jet in the Indian Ocean. Science 181(4096):262–264
Yanai M, Li C, Song Z (1992) Seasonal heating of the Tibetan Plateau and its effects on the evolution of the Asian summer monsoon. J Meteorol Soc Jpn 70(1):319–351
Zeng X, Lu E (2004) Globally unified monsoon onset and retreat indexes. J Climate 17:2241–2248
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Ms. Tracy Ippolito for her editorial assistance with the paper. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support given by NOAA (NA12OAR4310078) and the Earth System Science Organization, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India (Grant number MM/SERP/FSU/2014/SSC-02/002) to conduct this research under Monsoon Mission. We also thank the Indian Meteorological Department for the availability of the daily rain analysis over India. The data used in this study are publicly available datasets. ERA-20C is available from https://www.ecmwf.int/en/research/climate-reanalysis/era-20c; CFSR is available from https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds093.1/; and IMD rainfall analysis from http://www.imdpune.gov.in/ndc_new/ndc_index.html.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Misra, V., Bhardwaj, A. & Mishra, A. Local onset and demise of the Indian summer monsoon. Clim Dyn 51, 1609–1622 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3924-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3924-2