Deepti Singh, Michael Tsiang, Bala Rajaratnam, Noah S. Diffenbaugh

Nature Climate Change

Published date April 28, 2014

Observed changes in extreme wet and dry spells during the South Asian summer monsoon season

  • Completes a comprehensive statistical analysis of precipitation observations from 1951–2011
  • Shows that statistically significant decreases in peak-season precipitation over the core-monsoon region have co-occurred with statistically significant increases in daily-scale precipitation variability
  • Finds statistically significant increases in the frequency of dry spells and intensity of wet spells, and statistically significant decreases in the intensity of dry spells
  • Finds that these changes in extreme wet and dry spell characteristics are supported by increases in convective available potential energy and low-level moisture convergence, along with changes to the large-scale circulation aloft in the atmosphere