Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

The CLIVAR C20C project: skill of simulating Indian monsoon rainfall on interannual to decadal timescales. Does GHG forcing play a role?

Climate Dynamics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The ability of atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs), that are forced with observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs), to simulate the Indian monsoon rainfall (IMR) variability on interannual to decadal timescales is analyzed in a multimodel intercomparison. The multimodel ensemble has been performed within the CLIVAR International “Climate of the 20th Century” (C20C) Project. This paper is part of a C20C intercomparison of key climate time series. Whereas on the interannual timescale there is modest skill in reproducing the observed IMR variability, on decadal timescale the skill is much larger. It is shown that the decadal IMR variability is largely forced, most likely by tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs), but as well by extratropical and especially Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) related SSTs. In particular there has been a decrease from the late 1950s to the 1990s that corresponds to a general warming of tropical SSTs. Using a selection of control integrations from the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP’s) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3), it is shown that the increase of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the twentieth century has not significantly contributed to the observed decadal IMR variability.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Annamalai H, Hamilton H, Sperber KR (2007) The South Asian Summer Monsoon and its relationship with ENSO in the IPCC AR4 simulations. J Clim 20:1071–1092

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bracco A, Kucharski F, Molteni F, Hazeleger W, Severijns C (2007) A recipe for simulating the interannual variability of the Asian Summer Monsoon and its relation with ENSO. Clim Dyn 28:441–460. doi:10.1007/s00382-006-0190-0

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Copsey D, Sutton R, Knight JR (2006) Recent trends in the sea level pressure in the Indian Ocean region. Geophys Res Lett 33:L19712. doi:10.1029/2006GL027175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doherty RM, Hulme M, Jones CG (1999) A gridded reconstruction of land and ocean precipitation for the extended tropics from 1974–1994. Int J Climatol 19:119–142

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Folland CK, Shukla J, Kinter J, Rodwell MJ (2002) The climate of the twentieth century project. CLIVAR Exchanges 7(2):37–39

    Google Scholar 

  • Goswami BN, Madhusoodanan MS, Neema CP, Sengupta D (2006) A physical mechanism for North Atlantic SST influence on the Indian summer monsoon. Geophys Res Lett 33:L02706. doi:10.1029/2005GL024803

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hegerl GC, Zwiers FW, Braconnot P, Gillett NP, Luo Y, Marengo Orsini JA, Nicholls N, Penner JE, Stott PA (2007) Understanding and attributing climate change. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL (eds) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  • Hurrell JW, Hoerling MP, Phillips AS, Xu T (2004) Twentieth century North Atlantic climate change. Part I: Assessing determinism. Clim Dyn 23(3–4):371–389

    Google Scholar 

  • Ju J, Slingo JM (1995) The Asian Summer Monsoon and ENSO. Quart J Roy Meteor Soc 121:1133–1168

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keenlyside NS, Latif M, Jungclaus J, Kornblueh L, Roeckner E (2008) Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector. Nature 453. doi:10.1038/nature06921

  • Knight JR, Allan RJ, Folland CK, Vellinga M, Mann ME (2005) A signature of persistent natural thermohaline circulation cycles in observed climate. Geophys Res Lett 32:L20708. doi:1029/2005GL024233

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krishnan R, Sugi M (2003) Pacific decadal oscillation and variability of the Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Clim Dyn 21:233–242

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krishna Kumar K, Hoerling M, Rajagopalan B (2005) Advancing dynamical prediction of Indian monsoon rainfall. Geophys Res Lett 32:L08704. doi:10.1029/2004GL021979

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krishnamurthy V, Goswami BN (2000) Indian Monsoon–ENSO relationship on interdecadal timescale. J Clim 13:579–595

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kucharski F, Molteni F, Yoo JH (2006) SST forcing of decadal Indian Monsoon rainfall variability. Geophys Res Lett 33: L03709. doi:10.10029/2005GL025371

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kucharski F, Bracco A, Yoo JH, Molteni F (2007) Low-frequency variability of the Indian Monsoon–ENSO relationship and the Tropical Atlantic: the “Weakening” of the 1980s and 1990s. J Clim 20:4255–4266

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kucharski F, Bracco A, Yoo JH, Molteni F (2008) Atlantic forced component of the Indian monsoon interannual variability. Geophys Res Lett 35:L04706. doi:10.10029/2007GL033037

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li S, Perlwitz J, Quan X, Hoerling MP (2008) Modelling the influence of North Atlantic multidecadal warmth on the Indian summer rainfall. Geophys Res Lett 35:L05804. doi:10.1029/2007GL032901

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parker D, Folland C, Scaife A, Knight J, Colman A, Baines P, Dong B (2007) Decadal to multidecadal variability and the climate change background. J Geoph Res 112:D18115. doi:10.1029/2007JD008411

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parthasarathy B, Munot AA, Kothawale DR (1995) Monthly and seasonal rainfall series for All-India homogeneous regions and meteorological subdivisions: 1871–1994. Contributions from Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Research Report RR-065, August 1995, Pune

  • Rayner NA, Parker DE, Horton EB, Folland CK, Alexander LV, Rowell DP, Kent EC, Kaplan A (2003) Global analyses of SST, sea ice, and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century. J Geoph Res 108(D14):4407. doi:10.1029/2002JD002670

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scaife AA, Kucharski F, Folland CK, Kinter J, Fereday D, Fischer A, Grainger S, Jin K, Knight JR, Kusunoki S, Nath MJ, Nakaegawa T, Pegion P, Schubert S, Sporyshev P, Syktus J, Voldaire A, Yoon JH, Zhou T (2008) The CLIVAR C20C project: selected 20th century climate events. Climate Dyn (submitted)

  • Taylor KE (2001) Summarizing multiple aspects of model performance in a single diagram. J Geophys Res 106:7183–7192

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang B, Ding Q, FuX, Kang I-S, Jin K, Shukla J, Doblas-Reyes F (2005) Fundamental challenge in simulation and prediction of summer monsoon rainfall. Geophys Res Lett 32. doi:10.1029/2005GL022734

  • Wang B, Yang J, Zhou T, Wang B (2008) Interdecadal changes in the major modes of Asian-Australian Monsoon variability: strenghening relationship with ENSO since the Late 1970s. J Clim 21:1771–1789

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Webster PJ, Yang S (1992) Monsoon and ENSO: selectively interactive systems. Quart J Roy Meteor Soc 118:877–926

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu R, Kirtman BP (2005) Roles of Indian and Pacific Ocean air–sea coupling in tropical atmospheric variability. Clim Dyn 25:155–170

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang R, Delworth TL (2006) Impact of Atlantic multidecadal oscillations on India/Sahel rainfall and Atlantic hurricanes. Geophys Res Lett 33:L17712. doi:10.1029/2006GL026267

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou T, Yu R (2006) Twentieth century surface air temperature over China and the globe simulated by coupled climate models. J Clim 19:5843–5858

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou T, Wu B, Scaife AA, Li L, Fischer A, Voldaire A, Wang B, Folland CK, Fereday D, Kucharski F, Kinter J, Jin KE, Nath MJ, Lau N-C, Pegion P, Kusunoki S, Nakaegawa T, Syktus J (2008) The CLIVAR C20C Project: Which components of the Asian-Australian Monsoon variability are forced and reproducible? Climate Dyn (submitted)

Download references

Acknowledgments

A. Scaife and C. Folland were supported by the Defra and MoD Integrated Climate Programme—GA01101, CBC/2B/0417_Annex C5. J. Kinter and E. K. Jin were supported by research grants from NSF (0332910), NOAA (NA04OAR4310034) and NASA (NNG04GG46G). The MGO participation (P. Sporyshev) was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. T. Zhou was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China under grant number 2006CB403603. J. Kröger and F. Kucharski were partially supported by the ENSEMBLES project funded by the European Commissions 6th Framework Programme, Contract GOCE-CT-2003-505539. We wish to thank Xunqiang Bi (ICTP) for preparing the CMIP3 data and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that helped to improve the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to F. Kucharski.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Kucharski, F., Scaife, A.A., Yoo, J.H. et al. The CLIVAR C20C project: skill of simulating Indian monsoon rainfall on interannual to decadal timescales. Does GHG forcing play a role?. Clim Dyn 33, 615–627 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0462-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0462-y

Keywords

Navigation