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Two contrasting summer monsoon seasons in the recent past decade: An observational study

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Abstract

India experienced two extreme summer monsoons, 2007 (active monsoon) and 2009 (weak monsoon) in the recent past decade. The characteristic features of these two contrasting Indian summer monsoons have been presented. The country received 11.8% excess and 17.1% deficit rainfall during 2007 and 2009 monsoon seasons, respectively. These large deviations in rainfall encourage us to study the influence of meteorological factors on rainfall activity. The distributions of rainfall over India, latent heat flux, wind, Vertically Integrated Moisture Transport (VIMT), and Vertically Integrated Moisture Divergence (VIMD) values in the layer 1000–300 hPa for the domain, 0°–40°N, 40°–120°E in the two contrasting monsoon seasons are evaluated. In active monsoon, (i) predominant low level southwesterly flow over the Arabian sea and deflection of winds over the Bay of Bengal, strengthening of the tropical easterly jet stream, wide area extent of easterlies in the upper troposphere, the maximum strength of easterlies in the upper troposphere (150 hPa) is observed over the area around 10°–15°N and 70°–75°E; (ii) position of subtropical ridge is more northward, i.e., 32°N; (iii) a predominant moisture transport in the layer 1000–300 hPa from Southern Hemisphere, Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal to the Indian mainland, westward/northward transport of moisture and area coverage of larger quantum of moisture flux is seen; and (iv) India experienced more number of mesoscale systems. The reverse is true for weak monsoon. Positive (neutral) Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and La-Nina (El-Nino) conditions lead to active (poor) summer monsoon conditions over India in 2007 (2009) year.

Highlights

  • The inter-annual variations in summer monsoon rainfall over India exhibited two extreme summer monsoons 2007 (active) and 2009 (weak) during recent past decade, 2001–2010.

  • Dominant lower and upper tropospheric circulations over monsoon region are evident in the active monsoon.

  • The incursion of subtropical westerlies in the mid as well as upper troposphere inhibits the rainfall activity over India in the weak monsoon season.

  • A predominant moisture transport from the surrounding oceanic area as well as Southern Hemisphere to Indian mainland is seen in the active monsoon.

  • The moisture divergence over the surrounding oceanic area is high in active monsoon.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to the DGM, IMD for his encouragement. The authors are also grateful to the NCEP-NCAR for providing data resources. Thanks are also due to anonymous reviewers without whose probing queries this work would not have been more refined and boiled to the crux.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Meteorology and Oceanography, India Meteorological Department, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

    A Dharma Raju, S V J Kumar & K Naga Ratna

  2. Department of Meteorology and Oceanography, College of Science and Technology, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India

    C V Naidu

  3. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    Rama Krishna Karumuri

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  1. A Dharma Raju
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  2. C V Naidu
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  3. Rama Krishna Karumuri
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  4. S V J Kumar
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Contributions

AD: Proposed and mooted the central idea and did statistical work. CVN: Supervised the overall progress, made suitable suggestions and completed the final manuscript. RK: Data collection, visualizations and necessary inputs for graphics. SV: Analyzed the data, interpreted and drafted the manuscript. Also, carried out the standardization of the data of rainfall time series and prepared the visualizations. KN: Guided the preliminary work and helped in providing data, and in the analysis of oceanic and circulation patterns observed in the study.

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Correspondence to A Dharma Raju.

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Communicated by C Gnanaseelan

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Raju, A.D., Naidu, C.V., Karumuri, R.K. et al. Two contrasting summer monsoon seasons in the recent past decade: An observational study. J Earth Syst Sci 130, 66 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-021-01559-5

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