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Uppara, Umakanth, Webber, Benjamin 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8812-5929, Joshi, Manoj ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2948-2811 and Turner, Andrew George
(2026)
The influence of cold SST anomalies surrounding the Maritime Continent on the El Niño-Indian monsoon teleconnection.
Climate Dynamics.
ISSN 0930-7575
(In Press)
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Abstract
The Indian summer monsoon (ISM) is strongly influenced by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), with Central Pacific (CP) El Niño events typically producing more severe droughts over India than Eastern Pacific (EP) events. Using idealized atmospheric model experiments, we show that this contrasting response is governed by sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the south-eastern Indian Ocean (SEIO). Under Pacific-only SST forcing, EP El Niño suppresses ISM rainfall more strongly than CP El Niño events. The addition of SEIO cooling reverses this hierarchy, with enhanced drying over India during CP events relative to EP events. The reversal arises because the zonal separation between the warm Pacific and the cold anomalies around the Maritime Continent (MC) is greater during EP events, forcing Walker descent over the MC, whereas the separation is less during CP events, allowing subsidence to spread over India. Diagnostics confirm that the combined response is strongly nonlinear. These results advance our mechanistic understanding of how the spatial configuration of SST anomalies across the Indo-Pacific governs the Indian summer monsoon response to El Niño, with implications for how ENSO-type diversity is represented in prediction systems.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Faculty \ School: | University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Climatic Research Unit Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Jul 2026 12:57 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Jul 2026 12:57 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103895 |
| DOI: | issn:0930-7575 |
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