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Prediction of winter precipitation over northwest India using ocean heat fluxes

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Abstract

The winter precipitation (December–February) over northwest India (NWI) is highly variable in terms of time and space. The maximum precipitation occurs over the Himalaya region and decreases towards south of NWI. The winter precipitation is important for water resources and agriculture sectors over the region and for the economy of the country. It is an exigent task to the scientific community to provide a seasonal outlook for the regional scale precipitation. The oceanic heat fluxes are known to have a strong linkage with the ocean and atmosphere. Henceforth, in this study, we obtained the relationship of NWI winter precipitation with total downward ocean heat fluxes at the global ocean surface, 15 regions with significant correlations are identified from August to November at 90 % confidence level. These strong relations encourage developing an empirical model for predicting winter precipitation over NWI. The multiple linear regression (MLR) and principal component regression (PCR) models are developed and evaluated using leave-one-out cross-validation. The developed regression models are able to predict the winter precipitation patterns over NWI with significant (99 % confidence level) index of agreement and correlations. Moreover, these models capture the signals of extremes, but could not reach the peaks (excess and deficit) of the observations. PCR performs better than MLR for predicting winter precipitation over NWI. Therefore, the total downward ocean heat fluxes at surface from August to November are having a significant impact on seasonal winter precipitation over the NWI. It concludes that these interrelationships are more useful for the development of empirical models and feasible to predict the winter precipitation over NWI with sufficient lead-time (in advance) for various risk management sectors.

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Acknowledgments

The research conducted has been a part of the project entitled ‘Development and Application of Extended Range Forecast System for Climate Risk Management in Agriculture phase-II’ at IIT, Bhubaneswar sponsored by the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Government of India. IMD thanked for providing observed gridded rainfall datasets. The reanalysis datasets in this study has been provided by the NCEP–NCAR, USA. The authors are thankful to Dr. B. S. L. Vidhyadhari, Assistant Professor, NIMS, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Mr. S. Kiran Prasad, and Nandimpalli Raghu, School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences (SEOCS), Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar for thier help and support. We acknowledge the constructive comments and suggestions of three anonymous reviewers to improve the quality of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, A2-805, Toshali Bhavan, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, 751007, India

    M. M. Nageswararao & U. C. Mohanty

  2. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India

    Krishna K. Osuri

  3. Department of Meteorology and Oceanography, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India

    M. M. Nageswararao & S. S. V. S. Ramakrishna

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  1. M. M. Nageswararao
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  2. U. C. Mohanty
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  3. Krishna K. Osuri
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  4. S. S. V. S. Ramakrishna
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Correspondence to M. M. Nageswararao.

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Nageswararao, M.M., Mohanty, U.C., Osuri, K.K. et al. Prediction of winter precipitation over northwest India using ocean heat fluxes. Clim Dyn 47, 2253–2271 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-015-2962-x

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