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The general circulation model precipitation bias over the southwestern equatorial Indian Ocean and its implications for simulating the South Asian monsoon

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Abstract

Most of current general circulation models (GCMs) show a remarkable positive precipitation bias over the southwestern equatorial Indian Ocean (SWEIO), which can be thought of as a westward expansion of the simulated IO convergence zone toward the coast of Africa. The bias is common to both coupled and uncoupled models, suggesting that its origin does not stem from the way boundary conditions are specified. The spatio-temporal evolution of the precipitation and associated three-dimensional atmospheric circulation biases is comprehensively characterized by comparing the GFDL AM3 atmospheric model to observations. It is shown that the oceanic bias, which develops in spring and reduces during the monsoon season, is associated to a consistent precipitation and circulation anomalous pattern over the whole Indian region. In the vertical, the areas are linked by an anomalous Hadley-type meridional circulation, whose northern branch subsides over northeastern India significantly affecting the monsoon evolution (e.g., delaying its onset). This study makes the case that the precipitation bias over the SWEIO is forced by the model excess response to the local meridional sea surface temperature (SST) gradient through enhanced near-surface meridional wind convergence. This is suggested by observational evidence and supported by AM3 sensitivity experiments. The latter show that relaxing the magnitude of the meridional SST gradient in the SWEIO can lead to a significant reduction of both local and large-scale precipitation and circulation biases. The ability of local anomalies over the SWEIO to force a large-scale remote response to the north is further supported by numerical experiments with the GFDL spectral dry dynamical core model. By imposing a realistic anomalous heating source over the SWEIO the model is able to reproduce the main dynamical features of the AM3 bias. These results indicate that improved GCM simulations of the South Asian summer monsoon could be achieved by reducing the springtime model bias over the SWEIO. Deficiencies in the atmospheric model, and in particular in the convective parameterization, are suggested to play a key role. Finally, the important mechanism controlling the simulated precipitation distribution over South Asia found here should be considered in the interpretation and attribution of regional precipitation variation under climate change.

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Notes

  1. GPCP show a closer resemblance to TRMM than CMAP. Most notably, CMAP appears to have deficiencies over the Bay of Bengal and the eastern IO (e.g., Xie et al. 2006), with GPCP precipitation more anchored to the land (e.g., Cash et al. 2008).

  2. The analysis presented in Fig. 1e was also conducted with a multi-model average of coupled model intercomparison project phase 3 (CMIP3) GCMs, and with the GFDL coupled climate model CM3, of which AM3 is the atmospheric component. The biases in precipitation and low-level circulation, not displayed here for brevity, grossly resemble those of AM3, especially along the equatorial IO.

  3. Since global observations of PBL height are not available, the ERA40 PBL is used as “observations” for this qualitative analysis. von Engeln and Texeira (2010) estimate a springtime PBL height of about 1,250 m over the SWEIO, comparable to the ~1,000 m from the ERA40 climatology. Both estimates are much higher than the AM3 values (~600 m).

  4. The average SST values between 35°S and 20°N are 26.97 ° and 27.03 °C for the idealized and actual profiles, respectively, while the root mean square difference is 0.54 °C. South of 35°S a relatively abrupt transition between the idealized and actual SST profiles exists, which could be smoothed out. At this time, this critical latitude was considered to be located sufficiently southward of the targeted precipitation region to avoid any substantial impact on the area of interest, given the preliminary and mostly qualitative nature of these experiments.

  5. A control and an “additional heating” experiments were also performed with a steady, linear primitive equation model (Bollasina and Nigam 2011) forced by ERA-40 climatological mean fields, including three-dimensional diabatic heating. The “additional heating” experiment consisted in prescribing a positive diabatic heating anomaly over the SWEIO mimicking the AM3 precipitation bias during May. The simulated equilibrium response is consistent with the dry dynamical model response at t = 10 days.

  6. The mean flow plays an important role in determining the growth and propagation of waves from the perturbed region. During May upper-level weak easterlies (~5–10 m s−1) lie over the region of the prescribed heating and northward to about 10°N, which tend to dampen the amplitude of the Rossby wave response. However, the strong westerlies (~25 m s−1) over northern India facilitate the growth of Rossby waves.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Chris Golaz for helpful discussions. We also thank Takeshi Doi and Matthew Harrison for reviewing an earlier version of the manuscript, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

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  1. Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Massimo A. Bollasina

  2. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/NOAA, 201 Forrestal Road, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA

    Yi Ming

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Correspondence to Massimo A. Bollasina.

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Bollasina, M.A., Ming, Y. The general circulation model precipitation bias over the southwestern equatorial Indian Ocean and its implications for simulating the South Asian monsoon. Clim Dyn 40, 823–838 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1347-7

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