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

U. Umakanth, Amit P. Kesarkar, T. Narayana Rao, S. Vijaya Bhaskar Rao

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5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)193-198
Number of pages6
JournalAtmospheric Science Letters
Volume16
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2015

Keywords

  • Break monsoon
  • Indian summer monsoon
  • Rain fraction
  • Spatial variability of rainfall

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