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On the relationship between Indian summer monsoon withdrawal and Indo-Pacific SST anomalies before and after 1976/1977 climate shift

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Abstract

A clear shift in the withdrawal dates of the Indian Summer Monsoon is observed in the long term time series of rainfall data. Prior (posterior) to the 1976/1977 climate shift most of the withdrawal dates are associated with a late (an early) withdrawal. As a result, the length of the rainy season (LRS) over the Indian land mass has also undergone similar changes (i.e., longer (shorter) LRS prior (posterior) to the climate shift). In this study, probable reasons for this significant shift in withdrawal dates and the LRS are investigated using reanalysis/observed datasets and also with the help of an atmospheric general circulation model. Reanalysis/observational datasets indicate that prior to the climate shift the sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean and the Arabian Sea exerted a strong influence on both the withdrawal and the LRS. After the climate shift, the influence of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean SST has decreased and surprisingly, the influence of the Arabian Sea SST is almost non-existent. On the other hand, the influence of the southeastern equatorial Indian Ocean has increased significantly. It is observed that the upper tropospheric temperature gradient over the dominant monsoon region has decreased and the relative influence of the Indian Ocean SST variability on the withdrawal of the Indian Summer Monsoon has increased in the post climate shift period. Sensitivity experiments with the contrasting SST patterns on withdrawal dates and the LRS in the pre- and post- climate shift scenarios, confirm the observational evidences presented above.

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Acknowledgments

Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology is funded by Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India. C. T. Sabeerali acknowledges the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India for awarding the research fellowship. NCAR Command Language is extensively used in this study. The authors would like to acknowledge NCEP/NCAR and ECMWF for making the reanalysis data available. We would like to acknowledge the high resolution OISST provided by NOAA and the NOAA_ERSST_V3, ICOADS data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA. We thank the Max Plank Institute for making the ECHAM5 model available. RM acknowledges partial support from the ONR-DYNAMO grant, NASA-PO grants, IITM-Pune and the Divecha Center for Climate Change-IISc. We thank two anonymous reviewers and the Editor for their constructive comments to improve the previous version of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, 411008, India

    C. T. Sabeerali & Suryachandra A. Rao

  2. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

    R. S. Ajayamohan

  3. Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Raghu Murtugudde

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  1. C. T. Sabeerali
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  2. Suryachandra A. Rao
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  3. R. S. Ajayamohan
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Correspondence to Suryachandra A. Rao.

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Sabeerali, C.T., Rao, S.A., Ajayamohan, R.S. et al. On the relationship between Indian summer monsoon withdrawal and Indo-Pacific SST anomalies before and after 1976/1977 climate shift. Clim Dyn 39, 841–859 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-011-1269-9

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