Understanding and Predicting Climate Variability and Change at Monsoon Regions

Abstract

The chapter highlights selected scientifi c advances made under WCRP leadership in understanding climate variability and predictability at regional scales with emphasis on the monsoon regions. They are mainly related to a better under- standing of the physical processes related to the ocean-land-atmosphere interaction that characterize the monsoon variability as well as to a better knowledge of the sources of climate predictability. The chapter also highlights a number of challenges that are considered crucial to improving the ability to simulate and thereby predict regional climate variability. The representation of multi-scale convection and its interaction with coupled modes of tropical variability (where coupling refers both to ocean-atmosphere and/or land-atmosphere coupling) remains the leading problem to be addressed in all aspects of monsoon simulations (intraseasonal to decadal prediction,