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Extratropical anticyclonic Rossby wave breaking and Indian summer monsoon failure

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Abstract

Interactions between midlatitude disturbances and the monsoonal circulation are significant for the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) rainfall. This paper presents examples of monsoon–midlatitude linkage through anticyclonic Rossby wave breaking (RWB) over West Asia during June, July and August of the years 1998–2010. RWB events over West Asia are identified by the inversion of the potential vorticity air mass at three different isentropic levels (340, 350, and 360 K) using daily NCEP–NCAR reanalysis. It is observed that RWB took place over West Asia before/during breaks in the ISM. Further, these events occur on the anticyclonic shear side of the subtropical jet, where the gradient of the zonal wind is found to be high. RWB is responsible for the southward movement of high potential vorticity air from the westerly jet, leading to the formation of a blocking high over the Arabian region. In turn, this blocking high advects and causes the descent of upper tropospheric cold and dry air towards Central India. Such an air mass with low moist static energy inhibits deep monsoonal convection and thereby leads to a dry spell. In fact, we find that RWB induced blocking over West Asia to be one of the major causes of dry spell/break episodes in ISM. Additionally, the presence of cold air over Central India reduces the north–south thermal contrast over the monsoon region thereby modifying the local Hadley circulation over the region.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MOES), India Government, in the frame of the project entitled ‘South Asian Precipitation: A Seamless Assessment (SAPRISE)’. Interpolated NCEP Reanalysis data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd. TRMM 3B42 daily precipitation data has been downloaded from NASA site. We thank both the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which improved the quality of the manuscript significantly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Oceans, Rivers, Atmosphere and Land Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, 721 302, India

    Dhrubajyoti Samanta & M. K. Dash

  2. Earth and Climate Science Department, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, India

    B. N. Goswami

  3. School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, India

    P. C. Pandey

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  1. Dhrubajyoti Samanta
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Correspondence to M. K. Dash.

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Samanta, D., Dash, M.K., Goswami, B.N. et al. Extratropical anticyclonic Rossby wave breaking and Indian summer monsoon failure. Clim Dyn 46, 1547–1562 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-015-2661-7

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