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Projected changes in South Asian summer monsoon by multi-model global warming experiments

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An Erratum to this article was published on 08 February 2011

An Erratum to this article was published on 08 February 2011

Abstract

South Asian summer monsoon (June through September) rainfall simulation and its potential future changes are evaluated in a multi-model ensemble of global coupled climate models outputs under World Climate Research Program Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (WCRP CMIP3) dataset. The response of South Asian summer monsoon to a transient increase in future anthropogenic radiative forcing is investigated for two time slices, middle (2031–2050) and end of the twenty-first century (2081–2100), in the non-mitigated Special Report on Emission Scenarios B1, A1B and A2 .There is large inter-model variability in the simulation of spatial characteristics of seasonal monsoon precipitation. Ten out of the 25 models are able to simulate space–time characteristics of the South Asian monsoon precipitation reasonably well. The response of these selected ten models has been examined for projected changes in seasonal monsoon rainfall. The multi-model ensemble of these ten models projects a significant increase in monsoon precipitation with global warming. The substantial increase in precipitation is observed over western equatorial Indian Ocean and southern parts of India. However, the monsoon circulation weakens significantly under all the three climate change experiments. Possible mechanisms for the projected increase in precipitation and for precipitation–wind paradox have been discussed. The surface temperature over Asian landmass increases in pre-monsoon months due to global warming and heat low over northwest India intensifies. The dipole snow configuration over Eurasian continent strengthens in warmer atmosphere, which is conducive for the enhancement in precipitation over Indian landmass. No notable changes have been projected in the El Niño–Monsoon relationship, which is useful for predicting interannual variations of the monsoon.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the modeling groups that participated in the WCRP CMIP3 program and PCMDI for collecting and archiving the coupled climate model outputs. We acknowledge Dr. BN Goswami, Director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and Dr. P N Mahajan, Head, Forecasting Research Division for all the facilities provided. We are highly indebted to Dr. A. K Sahai, Senior Scientist at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, for his help in preparation of Taylor diagram. The anonymous reviewers are acknowledged who have helped improve the manuscript. This study is carried out under the project ES/48/ICRP/008/2005 sponsored by Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, India

    S. S. Sabade & Ashwini Kulkarni

  2. APEC Climate Center, Busan, South Korea

    R. H. Kripalani

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  1. S. S. Sabade
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  2. Ashwini Kulkarni
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  3. R. H. Kripalani
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Correspondence to Ashwini Kulkarni.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00704-010-0376-6

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Sabade, S.S., Kulkarni, A. & Kripalani, R.H. Projected changes in South Asian summer monsoon by multi-model global warming experiments. Theor Appl Climatol 103, 543–565 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-010-0296-5

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