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Signals of northward propagating monsoon intraseasonal oscillations (MISOs) in the RegCM4.7 CORDEX-CORE simulation over South Asia domain

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Abstract

Northward propagating summer monsoon intraseasonal oscillations (MISOs) in the Indian Ocean region remain poorly understood and difficult to predict. Here we examine a free-running high-resolution regional atmospheric model (RegCM4.7 with 25 km resolution), forced distantly at the boundaries by atmospheric observations (ERA-Interim, 0.75\(^{\circ }\)) and forced locally by observed sea-surface temperature (SST) over the period 1979–2016, to assess its ability to reproduce key aspects of these MISOs. We find that the model MISO exhibits spatial structures and northward propagation characteristics broadly similar to observed MISO when confining the analysis to the 25–90 day period band. The MISO precipitation anomalies are then shown to be consistent with previously known observed relationships to broad-scale sea-level pressure patterns, Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) positioning, and changes in the regional Hadley Cell component. The total simulated seasonal (JJAS) rainfall anomalies over India are not significantly correlated with observations, indicating that intrinsic variations in the regional model atmosphere dominate most of the precipitation variability. However, the bandpass-filtered MISO anomalies surprisingly exhibit a significant correlation (0.61) with observations. This suggests that instabilities in the regional broad-scale atmospheric circulation, e.g., linked to the ITCZ position or strength, may be partly controlled by the large-scale atmospheric flows specified at the domain boundaries and/or that specified local SST anomalies may help to guide some fraction of the developing model MISO to follow observations. This result motivates further research on MISO initiation and development using this type of regional atmospheric model. 

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Acknowledgements

This work forms a part of the Ph.D. dissertation of SG and was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship (2019 Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowships for Doctoral Research funded by USIEF and DST). We thank Matlab (v: 2019, 2020, 2021) and NCL (v: 6.6.2) for providing the visual platform for data handling, data analysis and data visualization. Analysis was carried out at the Cheyenne supercomputer (doi:10.5065/D6RX99HX) provided by NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL). SG, ACS, and AJM are grateful for support by the United States Office of Naval Research MISO-BOB Departmental Research Initiative under grant N00014-17-1-2865. AJM was also partly supported by the National Science Foundation (OCE-2022868). SG acknowledge to Prof. William J. Gutowski for providing some critical feedback on the regional climate modeling. Authors are thankful to the ICTP and Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) for the RegCM4.7 model and the TRMM rainfall data respectively.

Funding

This study is supported by the 2019 Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowships for Doctoral Research funded by USIEF and DST. SG, ACS, and AJM are grateful for support by the United States Office of Naval Research MISO-BOB Departmental Research Initiative under grant N00014-17-1-2865. AJM was also partly supported by the National Science Foundation (OCE-2022868).

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Author notes

  1. Soumik Ghosh

    Present address: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

  2. Sushant Das

    Present address: Department of Meteorology (MISU), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

    Soumik Ghosh & Arthur J. Miller

  2. Department of Geophysics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

    Soumik Ghosh & R. Bhatla

  3. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Aneesh C. Subramaniam

  4. Earth System Physics Section, The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

    Sushant Das

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  1. Soumik Ghosh
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Correspondence to Soumik Ghosh.

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Ghosh, S., Miller, A.J., Subramaniam, A.C. et al. Signals of northward propagating monsoon intraseasonal oscillations (MISOs) in the RegCM4.7 CORDEX-CORE simulation over South Asia domain. Clim Dyn 61, 3237–3251 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06729-3

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