57 research outputs found

    A recipe for simulating the interannual variability of the Asian summer monsoon and its relation with ENSO

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    Author Posting. © The Authors, 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Climate Dynamics 28 (2007): 441-460, doi: 10.1007/s00382-006-0190-0.This study investigates how accurately the interannual variability over the Indian Ocean basin and the relationship between the Indian summer monsoon and the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) can be simulated by different modelling strategies. With a hierarchy of models, from an atmospherical general circulation model (AGCM) forced by observed SST, to a coupled model with the ocean component limited to the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans, the role of heat fluxes and of interactive coupling is analyzed. Whenever sea surface temperature anomalies in the Indian basin are created by the coupled model, the inverse relationship between the ENSO index and the Indian summer monsoon rainfall is recovered, and it is preserved if the atmospherical model is forced by the SSTs created by the coupled model. If the ocean model domain is limited to the Indian Ocean, changes in the Walker circulation over the Pacific during El Nino years induce a decrease of rainfall over the Indian subcontinent. However the observed correlation between the ENSO and the Indian Ocean Zonal Mode (IOZM) is not properly modelled and the two indices are not significantly correlated, independently on season. Whenever the ocean domain extends to the Pacific, and ENSO can impact both the atmospheric circulation and the ocean subsurface in the equatorial Eastern Indian Ocean, modelled precipitation patterns associated both to ENSO and to the IOZM closely resemble the observations.The experiments described were performed as a contribution to the ENSEMBLES project funded by the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme, contract number GOCE-CT-2003-505539

    Electrons in molecules

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    Estimating the Loss of Himalayan Glaciers under Global Warming Using the δ18O–Salinity Relation in the Bay of Bengal

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    Quantifying the water loss of Himalayan glaciers due to global warming from direct measurement is difficult, as some glaciers are advancing or stable in spite of an overall retreat. We use a novel approach to provide an alternative estimate of the amount of Himalayan ice melt. Because a major part of this melted ice debouches into the Bay of Bengal through the Ganga–Brahmaputra basin, it causes significant variations in the oxygen isotopic composition (δ18O) and salinity (S) of the sea surface water and their mutual linear relationship. We document the temporal change in the δ18O–S relation for the bay at three different times during the period from 1994 to 2006, and using a model, we infer that 2.4 × 1011 m3 water was lost by melting from the Ganga–Brahmaputra basin during this period
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