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Regional Climate Model Performance in Simulating Intra-seasonal and Interannual Variability of Indian Summer Monsoon

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Abstract

Establishment of Indian summer monsoon (ISM) rainfall passes through the different phases and is not uniformly distributed over the Indian subcontinent. This enhancement and reduction in daily rainfall anomaly over the Indian core monsoon region during peak monsoon season (i.e., July and August) are commonly termed as ‘active’ and ‘break’ phases of monsoon. The purpose of this study is to analyze REGional Climate Model (RegCM) results obtained using the most suitable convective parameterization scheme (CPS) to determine active/break phases of ISM. The model-simulated daily outgoing longwave radiation (OLR), mean sea level pressure (MSLP), and the wind at 850 hPa of spatial resolution of 0.5°× 0.5° are compared with NOAA, NCEP, and EIN15 data, respectively over the South-Asia Co-Ordinated Regional Climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) region. 25 years (1986–2010) composites of OLR, MSLP, and the wind at 850 hPa are considered from start to the dates of active/break phase and up to the end dates of active/break spell of monsoon. A negative/positive anomaly of OLR with active/break phase is found in simulations with CPSs Emanuel and Mix99 (Grell over land; Emanuel over ocean) over the core monsoon region as well as over Monsoon Convergence Zone (MCZ) of India. The appearance of monsoon trough during active phase over the core monsoon zone and its shifting towards the Himalayan foothills during break phase are also depicted well. Because of multi-cloud function over oceanic region and single cloud function over the land mass, the Mix99 CPSs perform well in simulating the synoptic features during the phases of monsoon.

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Abbreviations

ISM:

Indian summer monsoon

RegCM:

REGional Climate Model by ICTP

CPS:

Convective parameterization scheme

OLR:

Outgoing longwave radiation

MSLP:

Mean sea level pressure

NOAA:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

NCEP:

National Center for Environmental Prediction

EIN15:

Era-Interim

MCZ:

Monsoon Convergence Zone

CORDEX:

Co-Ordinated Regional Climate Downscaling EXperiment

IMD:

India Meteorological Department

IPCC:

Intergovernmental panel on climate change

ICTP:

International Center for Theoretical Physics

MM5:

Mesoscale model version 5

BATS:

Biosphere-atmosphere transfer scheme

PBL:

Planetary boundary layer

ICBC:

Initial conditions and boundary conditions

OISST:

Optimum interpolation sea surface temperature

OI_WK:

OISST in weekly pattern

NCC:

National Climate Centre

Q–Q:

Quantile–Quantile

SD:

Standard deviation

RMSE:

Root mean square error

CC:

Correlation-coefficient

ECMWF:

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts

JJAS:

June–July–August–September

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Acknowledgements

This work is a part of a R&D project, funded by Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India. The authors wish to thank NOAA/OAR/ESRL (Boulder, Colorado, USA; http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for providing gridded datasets. Special thanks to the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy, for providing the RegCM. The Authors wish to extend their sincere gratitude to the Journal Editor and the Reviewers for their insightful comments on the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geophysics, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

    R. Bhatla & Soumik Ghosh

  2. DST-Mahamana Centre of Excellence for Climate Change Research, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

    R. Bhatla & R. K. Mall

  3. School of Earth Ocean and Climate Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bhubaneswar, India

    P. Sinha

  4. National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Ministry of Earth Science, Noida, India

    Abhijit Sarkar

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Bhatla, R., Ghosh, S., Mall, R.K. et al. Regional Climate Model Performance in Simulating Intra-seasonal and Interannual Variability of Indian Summer Monsoon. Pure Appl. Geophys. 175, 3697–3718 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-018-1886-x

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