Monitoring the Indian Summer Monsoon Evolution at the Granularity of the Indian Meteorological Sub-divisions using Remotely Sensed Rainfall Products
by
Amit Bhardwaj 1,2,* and Vasubandhu Misra 1,2,3
1
Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
2
Florida Climate Institute, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
3
Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(9), 1080; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11091080
Received: 5 April 2019 / Revised: 30 April 2019 / Accepted: 6 May 2019 / Published: 7 May 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Rainfall and Snowfall - Recent Advances)
We make use of satellite-based rainfall products from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) to objectively define local onset and demise of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) at the spatial resolution of the meteorological subdivisions defined by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). These meteorological sub-divisions are the operational spatial scales for official forecasts issued by the IMD. Therefore, there is a direct practical utility to target these spatial scales for monitoring the evolution of the ISM. We find that the diagnosis of the climatological onset and demise dates and its variations from the TMPA product is quite similar to the rain gauge based analysis of the IMD, despite the differences in the duration of the two datasets. This study shows that the onset date variations of the ISM have a significant impact on the variations of the seasonal length and seasonal rainfall anomalies in many of the meteorological sub-divisions: for example, the early or later onset of the ISM is associated with longer and wetter or shorter and drier ISM seasons, respectively. It is shown that TMPA dataset (and therefore its follow up Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG)) could be usefully adopted for monitoring the onset of the ISM and therefore extend its use to anticipate the potential anomalies of the seasonal length and seasonal rainfall anomalies of the ISM in many of the Indian meteorological sub-divisions.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Bhardwaj, A.; Misra, V. Monitoring the Indian Summer Monsoon Evolution at the Granularity of the Indian Meteorological Sub-divisions using Remotely Sensed Rainfall Products. Remote Sens. 2019, 11, 1080.
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