Abstract
The Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR) has been declining since the 1950s. However, since 2002 it is reported to have revived. For these observed changes in the ISMR, several explanations have been reported. Among these explanations, however, the role of the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean (EEIO) is missing despite being one of the warmest regions in the Indian Ocean, and monotonously warming. A recent study reported that EEIO warming impacts the rainfall over northern India. Here we report that warming in the EEIO weakens the low-level Indian summer monsoon circulation and reduces ISMR. A warm EEIO drives easterly winds in the Indo–Pacific sector as a Gill response. The warm EEIO also enhances nocturnal convection offshore the western coast of Sumatra. The latent heating associated with the increased convection augments the Gill response and the resultant circulation opposes the monsoon low-level circulation and weakens the seasonal rainfall.
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Data availability statement
Relevant scripts used to design the experiments, generate the graphics and produce the results presented in this study shall be provided on request.
Change history
28 June 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06401-2
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Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions has helped improving the manuscript greatly. The authors gratefully acknowledge IMD for providing the rainfall data; Climatic Research Unit (University of East Anglia) and Met Office, UK for providing the CRU data; APHRODITE (appropriate reference paper cited in section 2); NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, for providing the GPCP, OISST and NCEP reanalysis data from their website at https://psl.noaa.gov/; NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center for providing the TRMM data; the Met Office Hadley Centre, UK for providing HadISST data; ECMWF for providing the ERA5 reanalysis data. The CESM project is supported primarily by the National Science Foundation. We thank all the scientists, software engineers, and administrators who contributed to the development of CESM2. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme, which, through its Working Group on Coupled Modelling, coordinated and promoted CMIP6. We thank the climate modeling groups for producing and making available their model output, the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) for archiving the data and providing access, and the multiple funding agencies that support CMIP6 and ESGF.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (NRF-2018R1A5A1024958). Model simulation and data transfer were supported by the National Supercomputing Center with supercomputing resources including technical support (KSC-2019-CHA-0005), the National Center for Meteorological Supercomputer of Korea Meteorological Administration, and by the Korea Research Environment Open NETwork (KREONET), respectively. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Goswami, B.B. Role of the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean warming in the Indian summer monsoon rainfall trend. Clim Dyn 60, 427–442 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06337-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06337-7