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How good are the simulations of tropical SST-rainfall relationship by IPCC AR4 atmospheric and coupled models?

Rajendran, K and Nanjundiah, Ravi S and Gadgil, Sulochana and Srinivasan, J (2012) How good are the simulations of tropical SST-rainfall relationship by IPCC AR4 atmospheric and coupled models? In: JOURNAL OF EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE, 121 (3). pp. 595-610.

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Abstract

The failure of atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) forced by prescribed SST to simulate and predict the interannual variability of Indian/Asian monsoon has been widely attributed to their inability to reproduce the actual sea surface temperature (SST)-rainfall relationship in the warm Indo-Pacific oceans. This assessment is based on a comparison of the observed and simulated correlation between the rainfall and local SST. However, the observed SSTconvection/rainfall relationship is nonlinear and for this a linear measure such as the correlation is not an appropriate measure. We show that the SST-rainfall relationship simulated by atmospheric and coupled general circulation models in IPCC AR4 is nonlinear, as observed, and realistic over the tropical West Pacific (WPO) and the Indian Ocean (IO). The SST-rainfall pattern simulated by the coupled versions of these models is rather similar to that from the corresponding atmospheric one, except for a shift of the entire pattern to colder/warmer SSTs when there is a cold/warm bias in the coupled version.

Item Type: Journal Article
Publication: JOURNAL OF EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE
Publisher: INDIAN ACAD SCIENCES
Additional Information: Copyright for this article belongs to the Indian Academy of Sciences
Keywords: SST; rainfall; AGCMs; CGCMs; local and remote impacts
Department/Centre: Division of Mechanical Sciences > Divecha Centre for Climate Change
Division of Mechanical Sciences > Centre for Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences
Date Deposited: 06 Sep 2012 12:47
Last Modified: 06 Sep 2012 12:47
URI: http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/45007

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