Influence of different land-surface processes on Indian summer monsoon circulation

Abstract

The impact of different land-surface parameterisation schemes for the simulation of monsoon circulation during a normal monsoon year over India has been analysed. For this purpose, three land-surface parameterisation schemes, the NoaH, the Multi-layer soil model and the Pleim-Xiu were tested using the latest version of the regional model (MM5) of the Pennsylvania State University (PSU)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) over the Indian summer monsoon region. With respect to different land-surface parameterisation schemes, latent and sensible heat fluxes and rainfall were estimated over the Indian region. The sensitivity of some monsoon features, such as Somali jet, tropical easterly jet and mean sea level pressure, is discussed. Although some features of the Indian summer monsoon, such as wind and mean sea level pressure, were fairly well-simulated by all three schemes, many differences were seen in the simulation of the typical characteristics of the Indian summer monsoon. It was noticed from the results that the features of the Indian summer monsoon, such as strength of the low-level westerly jet, the cross-equatorial flow and the tropical easterly jet were better simulated by NoaH compared with verification analysis than other land-surface schemes. It was also observed that the distribution of precipitation over India during the peak period of monsoon (July) was better represented with the use of the NoaH scheme than by other schemes.