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Strikingly contrasting Indian monsoon progressions during 2013 and 2014: role of Western Tibetan Plateau and the South China Sea

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Abstract

This study presents some new perspectives on the progression of the Indian summer monsoon (June through September) during two contrasting summer seasons of 2013 and 2014. Monsoon 2013 witnessed above normal rainfall (105% of long period June-September average rainfall); on the other hand, 2014 experienced a severe drought (87% average rainfall). Furthermore, the south to north progression of monsoon 2013 was very rapid, but very slow during monsoon 2014. The disparity of monsoon progressions during the contrasting monsoons is demonstrated through the interaction between the vertical thermal contrast (VTC) of the upper troposphere over the western Tibetan Plateau (TP) and the South China Sea (SCS): a new dynamic perspective. This new perspective suggests interactions of the large-scale circulation anomalies driven by the thermal wind relation, which causes contrasts in the progression of the Indian monsoon. While during 2013 the SCS provided substantial moisture flux towards the Indian subcontinent, the year 2014 witnessed comparatively very few moisture flux incursions towards the Indian subcontinent. This highlights the role of the SCS in driving the differences during the contrasting monsoons. The role of VTC gradient (i.e., the difference in the VTC between the SCS and the western TP) is further demonstrated using a newly developed methodology, which exhibits causal relations of the VTC gradient between the two aforementioned regions with longwave flux (LWF) at the top of the atmosphere.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which helped improve the manuscript in the present form. Thanks are due to the teams of NCEP-DOE AMIP 2 Reanalysis Version 2 and MERRA for providing the respective datasets. Also, BHV is grateful to Xiang. San Liang for technical and scientific support in performing causality. The figures were prepared with GrADS.

Code availability

The code during the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Funding

This research was supported by the National Program on Global Change and Air-Sea Interaction (GASI-IPOVAI-06), and the “2015 Jiangsu Program for Innovation Research and Entrepreneurship Groups.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Marine Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST), Office No. S208, 219 Ningliu Road Nanjing, Nanjing, 210044, China

    B. H. Vaid

  2. Program on the Development of Skilled Manpower, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Dr. Homi Bhabha road, Pune, 411008, India

    R. H. Kripalani

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B. H. Vaid planned, performed the analysis, and wrote the paper. R. H. Kripalani added his expertise in the analyzed results and overhauled it in the present form.

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Vaid, B.H., Kripalani, R.H. Strikingly contrasting Indian monsoon progressions during 2013 and 2014: role of Western Tibetan Plateau and the South China Sea. Theor Appl Climatol 144, 1131–1140 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03590-4

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