A Review of the Asian-Pacific Monsoon

Abstract

Research on the Asian-Pacific monsoon has a long history. This paper starts by summarizing field experiments investigating the Asian-Pacific monsoon. Since the 1960s, a number of international and regional monsoon projects and field experiments have been carried out, and substantial progress regarding research on the Asian-Pacific monsoon has been made. Second, the onset and the seasonal march of the Asian summer monsoon and the annual cycle of active and break periods of the monsoon, which are characterized by precipitation maxima and minima, are studied. Since the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ or TCZ) is the dominating weather system and is the major birthplace of typhoons and tropical convective systems, the monsoonal rainfall and ITCZ are analyzed after the onset of the Asian monsoon. Finally, because the ITCZ has a close relationship with tropical convective systems and rainfall events in monsoon regions, analyses of the developments of deep convection and rainfall events are briefly introduced.