Theories for Past and Future Monsoon Rainfall Changes
- Creators
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Hill, Spencer A.
Abstract
Purpose of Review
Long-standing biases in simulations of past and present climate states and climate model disagreement even in sign of future monsoon rainfall changes evince limitations in our theoretical understanding.
Recent Findings
The dominant theoretical paradigms for understanding monsoon rainfall—convective-quasi equilibrium (CQE), the moist static energy (MSE) budget, and monsoons as local Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) shifts—all jettison the traditional “land-sea breeze” paradigm. Summer monsoon precipitation falls when the assumptions of CQE are most satisfied but those of the ITCZ shift framework are least satisfied. Zonal asymmetries, changes in ITCZ width and strength, hydrology-vegetation-CO2 coupling, and timescale-dependent responses complicate inferences of monsoon rainfall from paleoclimate proxy records. The MSE budget framework applied to deliberately designed simulations can illuminate key mechanisms underlying monsoon responses to external forcings, presenting a path toward falsifying model projections.
Summary
Sustained, rapid progress in monsoon rainfall theory is urgently needed by society and is plausible based on recent advances.
Additional Information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. First Online: 25 June 2019. I thank Yi Ming, Simona Bordoni, Jonathan Mitchell, Isaac Held, Ming Zhao, Natalie Burls, Martin Singh, Dargan Frierson, Bill Boos, Sarah Kang, Alex Gonzalez, Sean Faulk, David Neelin, Tim Merlis, Ho-Hsuan Wei, and Jack Scheff for conversations that have shaped my thinking on these topics. I also thank Michael Byrne and an anonymous reviewer for insightful reviews of the manuscript. This work was supported by a Caltech Foster and Coco Stanback Postdoctoral Fellowship. On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 97712
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190809-083115753
- Foster and Coco Stanback Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Created
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2019-08-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field