Relationship between ocean mean temperatures and Indian summer monsoon rainfall

Abstract

Besides improving the understanding of the physics of the challenging problem of monsoon prediction, it is necessary to evaluate the efficiency of the input parameters used in models. Sea-surface temperature (SST) is the only oceanographic parameter applied in most of the monsoon forecasting models, which many times do not represent the heat energy available to the atmosphere. We studied the impacts of ocean mean temperature (OMT), representing the heat energy of the upper ocean, and SST on the all India summer monsoon rainfall through a statistical relation during 1993–2013 and found that OMT has a better link than SST.