An objective criterion for the identification of breaks in Indian summer monsoon rainfall

We proposed a new objective criterion for discerning breaks in Indian summer monsoon rainfall, which is based on grid-level rainfall threshold. The identified breaks reproduced all well-known breaks discussed in the literature, but are relatively fewer in number. The correlation analysis between the number of break days and all-India seasonal rainfall is not only high (R² =−0.77) but also reproduced well-known association between El Nino and bad monsoon years. The fraction of seasonal rainfall in break days is found to be smaller (<10%) over most part of India than earlier studies, indicating that the discerned spells are valid for a large part of India.