Abstract
The monthly 1°×1° global snow cover (SC) data taken from version three of the twentieth-century reanalysis (20CR) project and the high-resolution gridded rainfall data provided by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for the years 1957–2015 are used to study the relation between southwest monsoon rainfall (SWMR) over India and the SC over Eurasia (35°–65°N; 40°–80°E) and Himalayas (20°–50°N; 50°–110°E) for the four sesquidecades 1957–1970, 1971–1985, 1986–2000 and 2001–2015. It is observed that the SC over Eurasia in April–May shows generally the well-known negative correlation with the all India averaged SWMR. However, the correlation became positive in the recent sesquidecade 2001–2015. Though the correlation between Himalayan SC and SWMR is increasingly positive during the first three sesquidecades, it becomes negative during 2001–2015 over the majority of the grid points. This drastic change in the relationship is attributed to the decreasing trend in the area of SC and the increasing trend in the North Atlantic Sea surface temperature (SST) during the last decade.
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Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge India Meteorological Department (IMD) for providing high-resolution rainfall datasets and twentieth-century reanalysis (20CR) project for providing snow cover data used in this study. One of the authors (M Sandhya) also acknowledges Department of Science and Technology, India for providing Women Scientist-A fellowship and necessary funding for carrying out the present study (Ref: SR/WOS-A/EA-34/2018).
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Dr M Sandhya, defined the problem and analysed the data. Dr S Sridharan, planned the analysis and discussion.
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Communicated by Somnath Dasgupta
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Sandhya, M., Sridharan, S. On drastic change in the relationship between snow cover and Indian monsoon rainfall. J Earth Syst Sci 132, 101 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-023-02115-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-023-02115-z