The Indian monsoon: 2. How do we get rain?

Abstract

The most important facet of weather and climate in a tropical region such as ours, is rainfall. I have considered the observed space-time variation of the rainfall over the Indian region, in the first article1 in this series. The ultimate aim of monsoon meteorology is to gain sufficient insight into the physics of this variation for predicting the important facets, with the help of atmospheric models based on the laws of dynamics and thermodynamics. Here I consider what we know about the rain-giving systems.