TY - JOUR
T1 - Meridionally extending anomalous wave train over Asia during breaks in the Indian summer monsoon
AU - Umakanth, Uppara
AU - Vellore, Ramesh K.
AU - Krishnan, R.
AU - Choudhury, Ayantika Dey
AU - Bisht, Jagat S. H.
AU - Di Capua, Giorgia
AU - Coumou, Dim
AU - Donner, Reik V.
N1 - This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Acknowledgements: The authors acknowledge the Director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, India, for the encouragement and support for this work. This work is carried out under the MoES-Belmont Project Globally Observed Teleconnections and their role and representation in Hierarchies of Atmospheric Models (GOTHAM). GdC, DC, and RVD acknowledge financial support by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research via the GOTHAM, Sacre-X and CoSy-CC2. The data providers of all used observational precipitation data sets (IMD, APHRODITE, and TRMM) and the ECMWF reanalysis (ERA-Interim) circulation products are thankfully acknowledged. The model computations were performed on the IITM high-performance computing (HPC) facility at IITM.
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - Anomalous interactions between the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) circulation and subtropical westerlies are known to trigger breaks in the ISM on subseasonal time-scales, characterised by a pattern of suppressed rainfall over central-north India, and enhanced rainfall over the foothills of the central–eastern Himalayas (CEH). An intriguing feature during ISM breaks is the formation of a mid-tropospheric cyclonic circulation anomaly extending over the subtropical and mid-latitude areas of the Asian continent. This study investigates the mechanism of the aforesaid Asian continental mid-tropospheric cyclonic circulation (ACMCC) anomaly using observations and simplified model experiments. The results of our study indicate that the ACMCC during ISM breaks is part of a larger meridional wave train comprising of alternating anticyclonic and cyclonic anomalies that extend poleward from the monsoon region to the Arctic. A lead–lag analysis of mid-tropospheric circulation anomalies suggests that the meridional wave-train generation is linked to latent heating (LH) anomalies over the CEH foothills, Indo-China, and the Indian landmass during ISM breaks. By conducting sensitivity experiments using a simplified global atmospheric general circulation model forced with satellite-derived three-dimensional LH, it is demonstrated that the combined effects of the enhanced LH over the CEH foothills and Indo-China and decreased LH over the Indian landmass during ISM breaks are pivotal for generating the poleward extending meridional wave train and the ACMCC anomaly. At the same time, the spatial extent of the mid-latitude cyclonic anomaly over Far-East Asia is also influenced by the anomalous LH over central–eastern China. While the present findings provide interesting insights into the role of LH anomalies during ISM breaks on the poleward extending meridional wave train, the ACMCC anomaly is found to have important ramifications on the daily rainfall extremes over the Indo-China region. It is revealed from the present analysis that the frequency of extreme rainfall occurrences over Indo-China shows a twofold increase during ISM break periods as compared to active ISM conditions.
AB - Anomalous interactions between the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) circulation and subtropical westerlies are known to trigger breaks in the ISM on subseasonal time-scales, characterised by a pattern of suppressed rainfall over central-north India, and enhanced rainfall over the foothills of the central–eastern Himalayas (CEH). An intriguing feature during ISM breaks is the formation of a mid-tropospheric cyclonic circulation anomaly extending over the subtropical and mid-latitude areas of the Asian continent. This study investigates the mechanism of the aforesaid Asian continental mid-tropospheric cyclonic circulation (ACMCC) anomaly using observations and simplified model experiments. The results of our study indicate that the ACMCC during ISM breaks is part of a larger meridional wave train comprising of alternating anticyclonic and cyclonic anomalies that extend poleward from the monsoon region to the Arctic. A lead–lag analysis of mid-tropospheric circulation anomalies suggests that the meridional wave-train generation is linked to latent heating (LH) anomalies over the CEH foothills, Indo-China, and the Indian landmass during ISM breaks. By conducting sensitivity experiments using a simplified global atmospheric general circulation model forced with satellite-derived three-dimensional LH, it is demonstrated that the combined effects of the enhanced LH over the CEH foothills and Indo-China and decreased LH over the Indian landmass during ISM breaks are pivotal for generating the poleward extending meridional wave train and the ACMCC anomaly. At the same time, the spatial extent of the mid-latitude cyclonic anomaly over Far-East Asia is also influenced by the anomalous LH over central–eastern China. While the present findings provide interesting insights into the role of LH anomalies during ISM breaks on the poleward extending meridional wave train, the ACMCC anomaly is found to have important ramifications on the daily rainfall extremes over the Indo-China region. It is revealed from the present analysis that the frequency of extreme rainfall occurrences over Indo-China shows a twofold increase during ISM break periods as compared to active ISM conditions.
KW - Active and break periods
KW - Extreme precipitation
KW - Indian summer monsoon
KW - Meridional Rossby wave
KW - Monsoon and mid-latitude flows
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85073992293&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s41748-019-00119-8
DO - 10.1007/s41748-019-00119-8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85073992293
VL - 3
SP - 353
EP - 366
JO - Earth Systems and Environment
JF - Earth Systems and Environment
SN - 2509-9426
IS - 3
ER -