Abstract
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is recognised as an important driver of interannual climate variability over different regions of the globe, including the regional monsoon systems. In particular, positive (negative) phases of IOD tend to be associated with above-normal (below-normal) monsoon rainfall over the Indian subcontinent. Realistic simulation of the IOD and Indian summer monsoon connection, however, remains a challenge in many of the state-of-the-art climate models. This study presents an analysis of IOD and its links to the Indian monsoon based on the historical simulations from the IITM Earth System Model (IITM-ESM) and other models that participated in the 6th phase of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). Our findings indicate that the IITM-ESM provides not only a fairly realistic simulation of the ocean–atmosphere coupled interactions and the Bjerknes feedback processes associated with IOD events but also better captures the summer monsoon precipitation response over the Indian subcontinent during IOD events, as compared to several CMIP6 models. The physical mechanisms contributing to the improved simulation of IOD and its monsoon connection in the IITM-ESM are evaluated in this study.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Director, IITM for providing support to carry out this research. The authors also thank the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Govt. of India, for supporting CMIP6 activities using IITM-ESM. We also thank the Editor and two anonymous Reviewers for their valuable suggestions. Authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and CMIP for availing CMIP6 datasets. The IITM-ESM CMIP6 simulations and all other datasets used in the study are publicly available and are described in the data and methodology section. The IITM-ESM model simulations were performed on the High-Performance Computing System at IITM. Freeware Ferret and NCL are used for the analysis of model simulations.
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Appendix A
Appendix A
For selecting the best CMIP6 models in simulating the tropical IO SST variability a skill score constructed based on the sum of pattern correlation coefficients of the annual mean SST, monthly variance of SST, EOF1 and EOF2 of monthly SSTA over the tropical IO [40oE-120oE, 20oS-20oN]. This method is adapted from Chu et al. (2014). Table S2 shows the best 8 models and their skill scores.
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Prajeesh, A.G., Swapna, P., Krishnan, R. et al. The Indian summer monsoon and Indian Ocean Dipole connection in the IITM Earth System Model (IITM-ESM). Clim Dyn 58, 1877–1897 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05999-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05999-z