NOVEMBER 2006

NCC
4

NCC RESEARCH REPORT

On El Nino Indian Monsoon Predictive Relationships

M. Rajeevan D. S. Pai

NATIONAL CLIMATE CENTRE OFFICE OF THE ADDITIONAL DIRECTOR GENERAL OF METEOROLOGY (RESEARCH) INDIA METEOROLOGICAL DEPARTMENT PUNE - 411 005

IN DIA M ET

LOGICAL RO DE EO

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National Climate Centre Research Report No: 4/2006

On El Nino-Indian Monsoon Predictive Relationships

M. Rajeevan and D. S. Pai

National Climate Centre India Meteorological Department PUNE. INDIA 411005 ncc@imdpune.gov.in

Abstract

Most of severe droughts in India have been associated with the El Nino events. However, El Nino years have not always produced severe droughts. A recent paper by Krishna Kumar et al. (2006) addressed this issue by analyzing a long time series of sea surface temperature data and by model studies. In their study, it was suggested that El Nino events with the warmest SST anomalies in the central Pacific are more effective in focusing drought producing subsidence over India than events with the warmest SST anomalies in the eastern equatorial Pacific. They have further suggested that spatial configuration of tropical Pacific SST anomalies has a significant impact on the Indian monsoon and the incorporation of SST configuration information in the statistical models should improve monsoon forecast skill. The results of Krishna Kumar (2006), however, pertains the simultaneous relationships between El Nino and Indian monsoon. In this study, we have further explored the hypothesis, especially on the skill of monsoon forecasts. The present study reveals that the El Nino composite SST spatial pattern is not always reflected in individual years and there are some exceptions. Incorporation of information on the spatial pattern of SST anomalies (by incorporating additional index of the Trans Nino Index) as suggested by KK(2006) does not improve the association between El Nino and Indian monsoon rainfall as Krishna Kumar et al. (2006) hypothesized. Simply using the SST index over the central Pacific (Nino- 3.4) may be a better indicator for the association than the combined index derived from Nino-3 and Trans Nino Index (TNI).

1.

Introduction
Inter-annual variability of Indian monsoon rainfall has profound influence on

agriculture and national economy. Even though there is no long term trend, occurrence of droughts and floods associated with the inter-annual variability of Indian monsoon affects the agriculture, water resources and financial sectors. In spite of an increase in share from the service sector to Indias growth, the performance of the agricultural sector is a decisive factor to the growth of GDP of India. A significant finding of the study by Gadgil and Gadgil (2006) is the observed asymmetry in the response to monsoon variation, with magnitude of the impact of deficit rainfall on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Food Grain Production (FGP) being larger than the impact of surplus rainfall. The study reveals that despite a substantial decrease in the contribution of agriculture to GDP over the five decades, the impact of severe droughts has remained between 2 and 5% of GDP throughout. The inter-annual variability of Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR) has been linked to variations of Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) over the equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans, Eurasian snow cover etc (Sikka 1980, Rasmusson and Carpenter 1983, Gadgil et al. 2004, Krishna Kumar et al. 1999, Rajeevan et al. 2002, Bamzai and Shukla 1999, Behera and Yamagata 2001, Terray et al. 2003). The relationship between El Nino events and Indian monsoon has been studied by many researchers since 1980 (Sikka 1980, Rasmusson and Carpenter 1983, Barnett 1983, Mooley and Parthasarathy 1984, Krishna Kumar et al. 1999, Krishnamurthy and Goswami 2000, Pai 2003, Kane 2005). Keshavamurthy (1982) studied the sensitivity of the SST anomalies over the equatorial Pacific Ocean using the GFDL general circulation model. He concluded that the SST anomalies over the central and west Pacific are more effective in making the influence on the atmospheric circulation. Analysis of the long term data suggests there is an inverse relationship between the El Nino events and ISMR. Most of severe droughts over India have occurred in association with El Nino events. However, there is no one-to-one relationship. Table-1 shows the relationship between the Warm (El Nino) and Cold events (La Nina) over the equatorial Pacific and ISMR. In this table, a warm event is identified

as the event with Nino-3 standardized anomaly more than 1.0 during the JuneSeptember period. Similarly, the cold event is identified with Nino-3 less than -1.0 during the same period. The 126 year record (1880-2005) suggests, only less than half of El Nino events are associated with deficient rainfall over India. In other El Nino years, ISMR was normal or excess. This relationship is found to be more or less the same, even if we use Nino-3.4 index. A typical example for the exception of the relationship is shown in Fig.1, in which the June-September SST anomalies are shown for 1997 and 2002 El Nino years. The El Nino event of 1997 was the most severe El Nino event of the 21st century with the largest Nino-3 standardized anomaly of 3.40C during the JJAS period. However, ISMR in 1997 was slightly above normal (102% of Long period average, LPA). Comparatively, the 2002 event was a weak El Nino event with modest positive SST anomalies (0.950C) over the Nino-3 region. However, 2002 was a drought year with seasonal monsoon rainfall deficiency of 19% due to a prolonged break in July. In a recent study, Krishna Kumar et al. (2006) (hereafter KK (2006)) addressed this important issue of El Nino-Indian Monsoon relationship using both the observed data and atmospheric model studies. The Fig 1 from KK (2006) is shown as Fig.2 a in the present study. It shows that there were 23 years during the period 1871-2004 when the JJAS NINO3 SST anomaly (standardized) was more than 1.0, which are taken as El Nino years. These years are shown in Table-2. Out of these 23 years, monsoon was deficient (less than -1.0) in 10 years. During the other 13 years, ISMR was either normal or excess. Fig.2.b shows the difference in composite SST anomalies between the El Nino years with droughts and El Nino years with normal rainfall (Fig.2 of KK (2006)). They have shown that the El Nino events with the warmest SST anomalies in the central equatorial Pacific are more effective in focusing drought producing subsidence over India than events with the warmest SST anomalies in the eastern equatorial Pacific. The physical basis for such different impacts is established using atmospheric general circulation model experiments with idealized tropical Pacific warmings. The difference in composites of SST anomalies shows that during the El Nino years with droughts (El_Drought), SST anomalies over the Central (east) Pacific were larger (smaller) compared to the SST anomalies during the El Nino years with normal monsoon rainfall (El_Normal). The GCM simulations demonstrated the strong influence of the Indian monsoon on the tropical
2

Pacific SST anomaly pattern associated with different El Ninos. The difference in the composites shows a large gradient in the SST anomalies across the equatorial Pacific from central to east Pacific. They have suggested that the traditional monsoon forecast methods using predictors that essentially capture the ENSOs strength are likely to be unsuccessful. They have further recommended that incorporation of SST configuration information in the statistical models should improve monsoon forecast skill. The present study was therefore taken up to examine the hypotheses made by KK(2006), that incorporation of SST configuration information in the statistical models should improve the monsoon forecast skill. We have examined this aspect using a long time series of global SST and rainfall data. To have a consistency of the results, we have used the same SST and rainfall data of KK(2006) and the analysis was also done in a similar way.

2.

Data
We have considered the period 1880-2004 for this analysis. Since KK(2006)

used the data of 1951-2002 for the composite analysis, we have considered the same period for the composite analysis. To keep the uniformity with the results of KK (2006), we have used the same monsoon seasonal (June to September) rainfall data of Parthasarathy et al. (1994), which are available at http://www.tropmet.res.in. For this analysis, we have used two different SST data sets. One set is the monthly NOAA Extended Reconstructed SST (ERSST.V2) data set (Smith and Reynolds 2004), which is available at 20 X 20 degree resolution. The other global data set was prepared by Kaplan et al. (1998), which is available at 50 X 50 resolution. All the SST data were downloaded from the site http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/. For our analysis, we have calculated mean, standard deviation and anomalies with the base period of 1951-1980 as was done by KK(2006).

3.
3.1

Results
Spatial Patterns We have examined the SST anomalies of JJAS period for each of the above

mentioned individual years to examine whether the composite SST pattern obtained in Fig 2. is observed in all the individual years. However, we have found many anomalous years. A typical example is shown in Fig.3, in which the SST anomalies of 1972 and 1997 are shown. The SST anomaly pattern is the same during both the years with the largest SST anomaly over the east Pacific Ocean. In 1997, the SST anomaly over the central Pacific was more than the anomaly in 1972. In spite of the same SST anomaly pattern, 1972 was a severe drought year and 1997, as mentioned earlier, was a normal monsoon year. More examples are given in Fig.4. In this figure, SST anomaly pattern in two different years (1994 and 1987) are shown. In 1987 and 1994, the largest SST anomaly was over the central Pacific. However, the overall monsoon performance was entirely different. In 1987, monsoon rainfall was deficient (-19%), while in 1994, it was excess by 10%. We have also prepared composites of SST anomalies of the two cases (El_Drought and El_Normal years) using the data of 1951-2002 as done by KK(2006). The years considered for the composite anomalies are shown in Table-2. There are six years each for the composite analysis. The composite SST pattern during the El_Normal and El_Drought years are shown in Fig. 5. The top panel shows composite during the El_Normal years and the middle panel shows the same for the El_Drought years. The bottom panel shows the difference between El_Normal and El_Drought years. This difference was tested for its statistical significance using a Students t test. The shaded regions in bottom panel correspond to the regions where the difference between the two cases is statistically significant (95% level or more). It can be seen that over a small portion of the central Pacific, the differences are statistically significant. Also, the equatorial Indian Ocean showed some statistical significance.

To examine the composite mean SST anomaly with respect to the spread (standard deviation) in the two cases, we have done another exercise, in which we have calculated the standard deviation or the spread among the members of El_Normal and El_Drought composite cases. The results are shown in Fig. 6. The left panels show the results for El_Normal years and the right panels show the results of El_Drought years. It can be seen that there is not much spread or deviation among the members in the drought composite. But in the composite of normal years, there is a large spread among the members, especially over the eastern Pacific. The bottom panels show the respective pattern of mean SST anomalies divided by the corresponding standard deviation. We find that standardized SST anomaly for the El_Drought years is appreciably larger than the standardized SST anomaly for the El_Normal years over the equatorial Pacific, right from the central to east Pacific Ocean. The difference in the standardized SST anomaly between the El_Normal and El_Drought years is shown in the bottom panel of Fig.7. It clearly shows that there is a positive difference of standardized SST anomaly between the El_Drought and El_Normal cases over the equatorial Pacific. However, the SST anomaly gradient across the central Pacific and especially colder SST anomalies over the east Pacific Ocean obtained by KK(2006) is not seen in this analysis. 3.2 Predictive Relationships The inverse relationship between El Nino and ISMR is statistically significant only during and at the end of the monsoon season (Rajeevan and McPhaden 2004) as shown in Fig. 8. Since the seasonal tendency of Nino-3.4 (AMJ-JFM) has a significant correlation with ISMR, it is being used in the operational long range forecast models of India Meteorological Department (IMD) (Rajeevan et al 2004). KK(2006) suggested that instead of using the strength of SST anomaly alone, the additional information on the SST pattern across the equatorial Pacific may improve the predictive skill. They have proposed to make use of the Trans Nino Index (Trenberth and Stepaniak 2001) in the prediction models to improve the skill. The TNI is defined as the difference between Nino (1+2) and Nino-4 SST anomalies. We have, therefore, explored the possibility of including the information on TNI for improving the prediction skill. However, we have to keep in our mind that the
5

results of KK(2006) pertain to simultaneous relationships between the SST anomalies over the central Pacific and ISMR. Fig.9. shows the scatter plot between the JJAS TNI and ISMR, which shows practically no statistical relationship between them. Fig.10. shows the scatter plot between JJAS Nino 3.4 and JJAS TNI. The scatter plot does not reveal any clustering of points among the drought years. When Nino 3.4 is more than 1.0, there is a clustering of normal and drought years together, which suggests that additional information of TNI does not help us to separate out the normal El Nino years from the drought years associated with El Nino. Gadgil et al. (2004) have shown the clustering of extreme years in the phase plane of ENSO and EQUINOO indices. This aspect was further examined by calculating a combined index by combining the JJAS Nino-3 and TNI values. The combined index was calculated as a weighted value of Nino-3 and TNI indices. The weights are proportional to the correlation of Nino-3 and TNI with ISMR for the whole period. The weights thus calculated for the period 1880-2004 for Nino-3 and TNI are 0.584 and 0.128 respectively. Fig. 11 shows the scatter plot between the JJAS combined index and ISMR for the period 1880-2004. This plot when compared to the scatter plot between Nino-3 and ISMR (Fig.2a) does not reveal any significant improvement in the El Nino-ISMR relationship. When the standardized combined index was more than 1.0, there were droughts as well as normal monsoon years. By adding, the TNI, normal monsoon years associated with El Nino could not be separated out as KK(2006) hypothesized. However, the two recent El Nino events of 2002 and 2004 were well discriminated in this analysis. This important point was further strengthened by plotting the 21 year running correlations of ISMR with Nino-3 and the combined index. The results are shown in Fig. 12, which suggests the weakening of the relationship between Nino-3 and ISMR during the recent years as brought out by Krishna Kumar et al. (1999). However, the 21 year CCs of the combined index also shows similar kind of weakening and the CC during the latest 21-year period is statistically insignificant. However, if we have considered simply the Nino 3.4 index without bothering about the TNI, the correlations are comparatively stronger and statistically significant even during the recent years. Therefore, the combined index (Nino-3 and TNI) does not provide more information than the information provided by Nino 3.4 index itself in the El Nino-ISMR relationship.
6

As mentioned earlier, the results of KK (2006) discussed only about the simultaneous relationships. As such, they do not have any predictive value. At present, the coupled models have not attained the capability of predicting the spatial pattern of SST anomalies over the equatorial Pacific accurately almost 6 months in advance. As mentioned earlier, the tendency of Nino-3.4 (April-May-June-JanuaryFebruary-March) is being used as a predictor in the operational statistical models. The scatter plot between the Nino 3.4 tendency (AMJ-JFM) and ISMR is shown in Fig. 13. The Nino 3.4 tendency-ISMR relationship alone explains about 16%. When we plot the tendency of the combined index (AMJ-JFM) (Fig.14), the relationship still explains only 16%.

Thus, this study has clearly shown that by including additional information on the SST spatial pattern across the equatorial Pacific, the skill of conventional statistical models with precursory signals (like the operational model of IMD) does not improve.

Conclusions
In this study, we have examined the hypothesis of KK (2006) that incorporation of spatial pattern of SST may improve the predictive skill of ISMR. The present study reveals that the composite SST pattern obtained for the El_Drought and El_Normal years is not always reflected in individual years. There are anomalous years, which does not reflect the composite pattern. One good example is the severe drought of 1972. The spatial pattern of SST anomalies in 1972 was similar to that of 1997, a normal monsoon year. To examine the predictive relationships of the inference of KK(2006), we have calculated a combined index by weighting the Nino-3 and Trans Nino Index (TNI). However, the combined index does not provide significant improvement in our understanding of the El Nino-Indian monsoon relationship. Simply using the Nino 3.4 index instead of Nino-3 may slightly improve the relationship. If we look at the long term data, the Trans Nino Index does not provide significant contribution. Therefore, the main conclusion of the present study is that incorporation of the spatial pattern of

SST anomalies over the equatorial Pacific may not improve the prediction skill of ISMR as KK(2006) hypothesized. At the end of our analysis, we feel that the El Nino-Indian monsoon relationship is still an open problem with many questions unresolved. The spatial pattern of SST anomalies seems to be not very vital in explaining the mystery of El Nino-Indian Monsoon relationship as KK (2006) concluded. Recent studies have suggested that the equatorial Indian Ocean Oscillation may be as important as ENSO in the interannual variation of the Indian monsoon (Gadgil et al 2004). El Nino and Asian monsoon are part of a complex coupled and mutually selective climate system (Webster and Yang 1992).It is clear that the Asian monsoon and the equatorial Indian Ocean Oscillation are not slaves to the forcing over the equatorial Pacific. They are mutually interactive systems. More careful analysis to unravel the mutual interaction between them should eventually lead to better methods for prediction.

Acknowledgement
We are thankful to Dr P.S.Goel, the Secretary, MOES for inspiring us to take this research work and to Shri.S.R.Kalsi and Dr (Mrs) N.Jayanthi for encouragement. We are also grateful to Prof (Mrs) Sulochana Gadgil, Prof R.Narasimha and Prof J.Srinivasan for fruitful discussions and valuable suggestions.

References
Bamzai A.S., and J.Shukla,1999, Relationship between Eurasian snow cover, snow depth and the Indian summer monsoon: An observational study, J.Climate, 12, 3117-3132. Barnett, T.P., 1983, Interaction of the Monsoon and Pacific Trade Wind System at Interannual Time Scales Part I: The Equatorial Zone, Mon.Wea.Rev., 111, 4, 756-773. Behera, S.K., and Yamagata, T., 2001, Subtropical SST dipole events in the Southern Indian Ocean, Geophys.Res.Letters, 28, 327-330. Gadgil, S., Vinaychandran, P.N., Francis, P.A. and Gadgil, S., 2004, Extremes of Indian summer monsoon rainfall, ENSO, equatorial Indian Ocean Oscillation, Geophys .Res.Letters., 31, do 10.1029/2004GL019733 Gadgil, S. and S. Gadgil, 2006, The Indian Monsoon, GDP and agriculture, Economic and Political Weekly, In Press. Kane, R.P., 2005, Unstable ENSO Relationship with Indian regional rainfall, Int.J.Climatol, 26,6, 771-783. Keshavamurthy, R.N., 1982, Response of the Atmosphere to Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies over the Equatorial Pacific and the Teleconnections of the Southern Oscillation, J.Atmos.Sci., 39, 1241-1259. Krishnamurthy, V. and B.N.Goswami, 2000, Indian MonsoonENSO Relationship on Interdecadal Timescale, J.Climate, 13,3, 579-595. Krishna Kumar, K., B.Rajagopalan, M.Hoerling, G.Bates and M.Cane, 2006, Science. Unraveling the Mystery of Indian Monsoon Failure during El Nino, doi: 10.1126/science.1131152 Krishna Kumar, K., B.Rajagopalan, M.Cane, 1999, On the weakening relationship between the Indian monsoon and ENSO, Science, 284, 2156-2159. Mooley, D.A., and B.Parthasarathy, 1984, Indian summer monsoon and El Nino, Pure and Applied Geophys., 121, 339-352. Pai, D.S., 2003, Teleconnections of Indian summer monsoon with global surface air temperature anomalies, Mausam, 54, 407-418. Parthasarathy, B, A.A.Munot and D.R.Kothawale, 1994, All-India monthly and seasonal rainfall series: 18711993, Theor. Appl.Climatology, 49, 217.

Rajeevan, M. and M.J.McPhaden, 2004, Tropical Pacific upper ocean heat content variations and Indian summer monsoon rainfall, Geophys.Res.Letters, 31, L18203, doi 10.1029/2004GL020631. Rajeevan, M., D.S.Pai, and V.Thapliyal, 2002, Predictive relationships between Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures and Indian summer monsoon rainfall, Mausam, 53, 337-348. Rajeevan, M., D.S.Pai, S.K.Dikshit and R.R.Kelkar, 2004, IMDs new operational models for long range forecast of southwest monsoon rainfall over India and their verification for 2003, Current Science, 86, 3, 422-431. Rasmusson E.M., and Carpenter, T.H., 1983, The relationship between eastern equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature and rainfall over India and Sri Lanka, Mon. Wea. Rev., 111, 517-528. Sikka, D.R., 1980, Some aspects of the large scale fluctuations of summer monsoon rainfall over India in relation to fluctuations in the planetary and regional scale circulation parameters, Proc. Ind.Acad.Sciences (Earth and Planet Sci), 89, 179-195. Smith, T.M., and R.W. Reynolds, 2004, Improved Extended Reconstruction of SST (1854-1997), Journal of Climate, 17, 2466-2477. Terray, P. Delecluse, P. Labattu, S. and Terray, L., 2003, Sea surface temperature associations with the late Indian summer monsoon, Climate Dynamics, doi 10.1007/s00382-003-0354-0. Trenberth, K.E. and D.P. Stepaniak, 2001, Indices of El Nino evolution, J.Climate, 14, 1697-1701. Webster, P.J. and S.Yang, 1992, Monsoon and ENSO: Selectively interactive systems, Quart.J.Roy.Met.Soc., 118, 877-926.

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Table -1 El Nino/La Nina association with All-India summer monsoon rainfall anomalies during 1880-2006. Based on ERSST data
Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall
ABOVE NORMAL NEAR NORMAL

DEFICIENT

-1.0 to -0.5

-0.5 to 0.5

0.5 to 1.0

NORMAL

EXCESS

BELOW

EL NINO (NINO-3>1.0) NORMAL LA NINA (NINO-3<-1.0) TOTAL

<-1.0

14

13

37

14

10

21

18

49

21

17

126

Table 2
El Nino Years considered by KK (2006) for their analysis

El Nino Years With Normal ISMR (13)

El Nino Years With Deficient ISMR (10)

1888 1889

1896 1902 1914 1915 1877 1899 1905 1918 1951 1925 1957 1963 1976 1965 1972 1982 1987 2002

1983 1991 1997

11

TOTAL 18 84 24

> 1.0

1997 ISMR: 102%

2002 ISMR: 81%

Fig.1 : Spatial Pattern of JJAS SST anomalies during 1997(left) and 2002 (right).

Fig.2 a: Scatter plot between JJAS Nino-3 and ISMR (Fig-1 of Krishna Kumar et al. 2006)

12

Fig. 2-b : SST Composite Difference between El Nino years with normal and deficient monsoon years. (Fig-2 Krishna Kumar et al. 2006)

1972 ISMR: -23%

1997 ISMR: +2%

Fig.3 : Spatial pattern of JJAS SST anomalies during 1972(left) and 1997(right)

13

Fig. 4 : Spatial pattern of JJAS SST anomalies: 1994 (left) and 1987(right).

Fig. 5 : Spatial Pattern of composite SST anomalies during Normal years (top), deficient years (middle) and the difference between deficient and normal years (bottom) along with areas with statistical significance (blue: 95% level, red: 99% level). Period of analysis: 1951-2004.

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Fig. 6: Spatial Pattern of composite SST anomalies during Normal years (left top), standard deviation (among the composite members) of SST anomalies (left middle) and the standardized anomalies (left bottom). Right panels are the same but for deficient years. Period of analysis: 1951-2004.

15

Fig. 7: Spatial Pattern of composite standardized SST anomalies during Normal years (top), deficient years (middle) and the difference between deficient and normal years (bottom). Period of analysis: 1951-2004.

16

Fig. 8. Temporal Pattern of the relationship between Nino-3 SST and ISMR.
RELATION BETWEEN TNI SSTA AND ISMR : 1880-2004
3.00

2.00

1.00 ISMR STD ANOMALY

0.00

-1.00

-2.00

-3.00 -3.00

-2.00

-1.00

0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

TRANS NINO INDEX JJAS STD ANOMALY

Fig.9: Scatter plot between Trans Nino Index (TNI) (Nino-4- Nino (1+2)) and ISMR anomalies. (1880-2004).

17

Scatter Plot between Nino 3 and TNI

4.00

3.00

2.00

2002 1991 1963 1905 1987 1940 1896 1965 1982 1930 1951 1888 1976 1902 1957 1972 1997

1.00

TNI (JJAS)

0.00

-1.00

-2.00

1939 1983

-3.00

-4.00 -4.00

-3.00

-2.00

-1.00

0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

Nino 3 (JJAS)

Fig.10. Scatter plot between JJAS Nino 3.4 and JJAS TNI (1880-2004)
RELATION BETWEEN COMBINED SSTA AND ISMR : 1880-2004
3.00 Series1 Linear (Series1) y = -0.5803x - 0.0196 R2 = 0.3452

1.00 ISMR STD ANOMALY

1993

1963

1997

-1.00

1940 1969 1896 1930 1888 1902 1957 1991 2004 1965 2002 1982 1905 1987 1972

-3.00 -3 -1 1 COMBINED NINO INDEX (JJAS STD ANOMALY) 3

Fig.11: Scatter plot between JJAS Combined Index and ISMR anomalies (1880-2004)

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21 year running correlations

0.9

0.8

0.7

Correlation Coefficient

0.6 Nino

0.5

0.4 C.Inde Nino-3 0.2

0.3

0.1

0 1890 1893 1896 1899 1902 1905 1908 1911 1914 1917 1920 1923 1926 1929 1932 1935 1938 1941 1944 1947 1950 1953 1956 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995

Year

Fig.12 : 21 year running correlations between ISMR and Nino-3 (blue), Combined Index (red) and Nino 3.4 (Pink). Period of analysis: 1880-2004.

19

Relationship between Nino 3.4 (AMJ-JFM) and ISMR

3.00 y = -0.56x - 0.0255 2 R = 0.1611 2.00

1.00

ISMR

0.00

-1.00

-2.00

-3.00 -2.50

-2.00

-1.50

-1.00

-0.50

0.00 Nino 3.4 Tendency

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

Fig.13 : Scatter plot between Nino.3.4 Tendency and ISMR. Period of analysis: 1880-2004.
Relationship between Combined Index (Nino 3.4 +TNI) and ISMR
3.00 y = -1.0003x - 0.0291 2 R = 0.1689

2.00

1.00

ISMR

0.00

-1.00

-2.00

-3.00 -1.50

-1.00

-0.50

0.00 Combined Index

0.50

1.00

1.50

Fig.14 : Scatter plot between Combined Index Tendency and ISMR. Period of analysis: 1880-2004.

20