Open AccessAn analytical study of hindcasts from general circulation models for I ndian summer monsoon rainfall
Author(s) -
Nair Archana,
Mohanty U. C.,
Robertson Andrew W.,
Panda T. C.,
Luo JingJia,
Yamagata Toshio
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
meteorological applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1469-8080
pISSN - 1350-4827
DOI - 10.1002/met.1395
Subject(s) - climatology , empirical orthogonal functions , hindcast , predictability , environmental science , indian ocean dipole , precipitation , monsoon , forcing (mathematics) , el niño southern oscillation , sea surface temperature , climate model , teleconnection , la niña , multivariate enso index , atmospheric sciences , climate change , meteorology , geography , geology , mathematics , oceanography , statistics
In this paper, precipitation outputs from retrospective seasonal forecasts made by nine G eneral C irculation M odels ( GCMs ) are used to investigate historical I ndian summer monsoon seasonal rainfall variability and predictability over I ndia. The observed data is taken from the I ndia M eteorological D epartment whereas GCMs are obtained from the I nternational R esearch I nstitute for C limate and S ociety, C olumbia U niversity, the N ational C enter for E nvironmental P rediction, and the J apan A gency for M arine E arth S cience and T echnology. The study focusses on J une– S eptember precipitation hindcasts initialized from the 1 May. First, the mean climatology, variance of interannual variability ( IAV ), and long‐term trends for the nine GCMs were evaluated. Then E mpirical O rthogonal F unction ( EOF ) is used to extract major climate modes and spectral analyses method is used to investigate the temporal properties of the leading principal components. It is found that the models are able to reproduce the climatology and IAV to varying degrees. The EOF and spectral analyses of models hindcast reveal that these models are capable of predicting the observed precipitation variability to some extent. In order to study the remote response, the correlation co‐efficient between model predicted rainfall and sea surface temperature ( SST ) have been calculated. The results suggest that the models show exaggerated remote response to ENSO SST forcing and the I ndian O cean D ipole M ode index has less predictive skill compared to ENSO . The correlation values between the model predicted M onsoon H adley I ndex ( MHI ) and observed MHI reveals that only a few of them could exhibit large scale circulation features well.