The summer monsoon of 1988

Summary

Time averaged, monthly mean fields of a number of climate parameters such as sea surface temperature anomalies, outgoing longwave radiation anomalies, 200 mb velocity potential field, streamfunction anomaly at the lower and the upper troposphere and percentage rainfall amounts are presented, for the summer of 1988 over the regions of Asian summer monsoon. Above normal rainfall occurred over most of the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia and eastern China during 1988. In comparison, 1987 was a drought year. This paper presents a comparison of some of the salient aforementioned parameters. The evolution of the planetary scale divergent motions and the streamfunction anomaly exhibit prominent differences during the life cycle of the monsoon in these two years. The velocity potential field exhibits a pronounced planetary scale geometry with the divergent outflows emanating from the monsoon region during 1988. The descending branches of these time averaged circulations are found over the Atlantic ocean to the west and over the eastern Pacific and North America to the east. The immense size of this circulation is indicative of an above normal monsoon activity. During 1987, the outflow center was located much further to the southeast over the western Pacific ocean. The longitudinal extent of the monsoonal divergent circulations were much smaller in 1987.

The positive sea surface temperature anomaly of the El Nino year 1987 is seen to move westwards to the western Pacific in 1988, a warm anomaly also appears over the eastern equatorial Indian ocean and the Bay of Bengal at this time. The latter contributes to the supply of moisutre during the active monsoon season of 1988. The outgoing long wave radiation anomalies evolve with a westward propagation of strong positive anomalies from the central Pacific ocean consistent with the evolution of divergent circulation. The streamfunction anomalies basically show westerly zonal wind anomalies being replaced by easterly anomalies during 1988 over the upper troposphere of the monsoon region.

The lower tropospheric streamfunction anomaly during the drought year 1987 showed a pronounced counter monsoon circulation. That feature was absent in 1988.