Does the El Niño-Southern Oscillation Impact on the Indian Summer Monsoon 1-Dimensional? Quantifying the Role of Antecedent Southwestern Indian Ocean Capacitance on the Variability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall over Homogeneous Regions of India

Abstract

Recent rapid changes in the global climate and warming temperatures increase the demand for local and regional weather forecasting and analysis to improve the accuracy of seasonal forecasting of extreme events such as droughts and floods. On the other hand, the role of ocean variability is at a focal point in improving the forecasting at different time scales. Here we study the effect of Indian Ocean mean sea level anomaly (MSLA) and sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) on Indian summer monsoon rainfall during 1993-2019. While SSTA and MSLA have been increasing in the southwestern Indian Ocean (SWIO), these parameters' large-scale variability and pre-monsoon winds could impact the inter-annual Indian monsoon rainfall variability over homogeneous regions. Similarly, antecedent heat capacitance over SWIO on an inter-annual time scale has been the key to the extreme monsoon rainfall variability from an oceanic perspective. Though both SSTA and MSLA over SWIO have been influenced by El Niño-southern oscillation (ENSO), the impact of SWIO variability was low on rainfall variability over several homogeneous regions. However, rainfall over northeast (NE) and North India (NI) has been moulded by ENSO, thus changing the annual rainfall magnitude. Nevertheless, the impact of ENSO on monsoon rainfall through SWIO variability during the antecedent months is moderate. Thus, the ENSO influence on the atmosphere could be dominating the ocean part in modulating the inter-annual variability of the summer monsoon. Analysis shows that the cooler (warmer) anomaly over the western Indian Ocean affects rainfall variability adversely (favourably) due to the reversal of the wind pattern during the pre-monsoon period.