The Indian Monsoon: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

The Indian region receives 80% of its annual rainfall during summer. The spatial and temporal variation of the Indian summer monsoon has wide scale implication on the socioeconomic aspect of the people living in the Indian subcontinent. The study of monsoon has always been in focus starting from the British period. The understanding of the monsoon processes has improved with time as a result of availability of better observation, computational facility, better models and improved parameterization physics. In this paper, we try to review earlier works dedicated to the understanding of various monsoonal processes and predictions. The major synoptic monsoon studies such as on the low-level jet, tropical easterly jet, mid tropospheric cyclones, onset vortex etc. are analyzed. Afterwards, the major works done during 21st century is discussed with special focus on the interannual and intraseasonal variability, teleconnection and on recent role of dust on the monsoon. The various forecasting methods of monsoon and the information dissemination is extensively debated along with the future prospects in this field.