The Indian Monsoon: Land, Sea and Sky
LOCATION
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
SPEAKER | Prof Doug Parker, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds.
ABSTRACT | The Indian Summer Monsoon is one of the most important climate systems on Earth, bringing the rains to sustain agricultural production for many hundreds of millions of people. The monsoon winds are known to convey moisture from the warm tropical oceans to the Indian subcontinent, where heavy rainfall occurs. The wet land surface then provides a water-cycle feedback with the rainfall, allowing significant recycling of the water between land and atmosphere. However, weather and climate prediction models struggle to represent the monsoon skilfully, with substantial errors in predicted rainfall, and particular problems forecasting monsoon onset. The talk will survey some of the current understanding of the dynamics of the Indian monsoon system, and will present a new conceptual model of the monsoon onset, highlighting the importance of dry air from the deserts in the northwest in suppressing rain in the pre-monsoon weeks. Observations and ideas from the 2016 INCOMPASS field campaign in India will also be presented, to illustrate some typical cases of monsoon meteorology.
SPEAKER | Prof Doug Parker, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds.
ABSTRACT | The Indian Summer Monsoon is one of the most important climate systems on Earth, bringing the rains to sustain agricultural production for many hundreds of millions of people. The monsoon winds are known to convey moisture from the warm tropical oceans to the Indian subcontinent, where heavy rainfall occurs. The wet land surface then provides a water-cycle feedback with the rainfall, allowing significant recycling of the water between land and atmosphere. However, weather and climate prediction models struggle to represent the monsoon skilfully, with substantial errors in predicted rainfall, and particular problems forecasting monsoon onset. The talk will survey some of the current understanding of the dynamics of the Indian monsoon system, and will present a new conceptual model of the monsoon onset, highlighting the importance of dry air from the deserts in the northwest in suppressing rain in the pre-monsoon weeks. Observations and ideas from the 2016 INCOMPASS field campaign in India will also be presented, to illustrate some typical cases of monsoon meteorology.