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Published Online September 7, 2006
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1131152

Reports

Submitted on June 12, 2006
Accepted on August 29, 2006

Unraveling the Mystery of Indian Monsoon Failure During El Niño

K. Krishna Kumar 1, Balaji Rajagopalan 2, Martin Hoerling 3*, Gary Bates 3, Mark Cane 4

1 Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, 411008, India.
2 Department of Civil Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA; Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
3 NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, CO 80305, USA.
4 Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Martin Hoerling , E-mail: martin.hoerling{at}noaa.gov

The 132-year historical rainfall record reveals that severe droughts in India have always been accompanied by El Niño events. Yet, El Niño events have not always produced severe droughts. We show that El Niño events with the warmest sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the central equatorial Pacific are more effective in focusing drought producing subsidence over India than events with the warmest SST in the eastern equatorial Pacific. The physical basis for such different impacts is established using atmospheric general circulation model experiments forced with idealized tropical Pacific warmings. These findings have significant implications for Indian monsoon forecasting.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)