The future of the Indian monsoon

印度季风是地球气候系统中最引人注目的组成部分之一。它提供了印度地区约80%的年降雨量，拥有超过10亿人口，准确预测其时间，强度和持续时间对农业和工业至关重要，这在印度经济中所占的比例越来越大。印度季风在许多不同的时间尺度上变化：极端降雨事件可能使城市陷入停顿，季风“中断”持续数周可能摧毁农作物，而在季节性时间尺度上，厄尔尼诺现象可能导致干旱。我们对季风的这些不同变化的理解是有限的，用来模拟它们的计算机模型往往是不够的。此外，我们对季风、其变化和驱动因素以及它们之间在气候变暖中的相互作用的理解也没有得到适当的解决。该奖学金将有助于确定印度季风将如何变化，以响应人为引起的强迫，重点是平均季风及其分布的变化，其不同时间尺度的变化，以及这些不同时间尺度的变化之间的关系。它还将研究我们的气候系统计算机模型中的错误如何影响季风的模拟。其结果将是有能力在短期和长期内作出更可靠的预报，从而也能够对人类引起的变化作出更有益的适应。该研究金将在阅读大学气象系进行，该研究所以其在热带天气和气候研究方面的专门知识而享誉国际。将使用先进技术将几个最先进的海洋和大气模型的输出与雨量计网络和卫星数据集的观测结果进行比较。实验将使用气象局哈德利中心的高性能超级计算设施模型进行，以找到季风变化的原因。通过与英国气象局合作，这项工作的结果将纳入联合气候研究计划，与印度科学家的定期接触将确保这项工作的直接效益。该奖学金直接涉及英国和欧盟资助者以及LWEC（与环境变化共存）计划确定的NERC主题和关键研究领域。

The Indian monsoon is one of the most dramatic components of the Earth's climate system. It provides around 80% of annual rainfall in the Indian region, home to more than one billion people, making accurate forecasting of its timing, intensity and duration vital for agriculture and industry, which is forming an increasing proportion of the Indian economy. The Indian monsoon varies on many different timescales: extreme rainfall events can bring cities to a standstill, monsoon 'breaks' lasting several weeks can destroy crops, and on seasonal timescales events like El Nino can cause drought. Our understanding of these different variations in the monsoon is limited, and the computer models used to simulate them are often inadequate. Furthermore, our understanding of what will happen to the monsoon, its variations and drivers and the interactions between them in a warming climate has not been properly addressed. This fellowship will help determine how the Indian monsoon will change in response to human-induced forcing by focussing on changes to the mean monsoon and its distribution, changes to its different timescales of variability, and the relationships between these different timescales of variability. It will also examine how errors in our computer models of the climate system can affect the simulation of the monsoon. The result will be the capability to produce more reliable forecasts in the short and long term, thus also enabling more useful adaptation to human-induced change. The fellowship will be undertaken at the Department of Meteorology in the University of Reading, an institute internationally renowned for its expertise in weather and climate research in the tropics. Advanced techniques will be used to compare output from several state-of-the-art models of the ocean and atmosphere with observations from raingauge networks and satellite datasets. Experiments will be performed using the Met Office Hadley Centre model on high performance supercomputing facilities to find the causes of changes to the monsoon. By working with the Met Office, the results from this work will feed into the Joint Climate Research Programme, and regular contact with scientists in India will ensure that immediate benefits from this work can be seen. This fellowship directly addresses NERC themes and key areas of research identified by UK and EU funders and the LWEC (Living With Environmental Change) programme.