The research aims to help improve predictive models
The researchers from the University of Notre Dame have received $2.9 million as a fund for their five-year study about the monsoons across the Indian ocean.
The research aims to measure oceanic and atmospheric conditions and flow patterns of monsoons across the Indian Ocean, particularly in the Bay of Bengal, to help improve predictive models, according to Notre Dame Research.
“We want to understand fundamental processes that regulate monsoons. The active and break cycles of rainfall within a monsoon season, called monsoon intraseasonal oscillations (MISO), are difficult to predict and involve intricate air-sea dynamics,†said Sri Lankan American Harindra Joseph Fernando, the principal investigator of the study, and Wayne and Diana Murdy Endowed professor at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences.
“Giant atmospheric wave patterns coming from the Indian Ocean impact countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Seychelles, and they circumnavigate and affect global weather – much like we see with the polar vortex. The focus of our research is to look at how these planetary-scale waves shape the regional weather and understand the conditions for extreme rainfall events,†Fernando said.
Current models can predict monsoon weather seven to ten days out and the researchers hope that the new study will help improve those predictions to several weeks.
The researchers will deploy a number of sophisticated instruments from research ships and an aircraft to measure the ocean and atmospheric properties over two monsoon cycles. They are interested in the temperature, salinity, humidity, flow velocities, turbulence, pressure and wave properties as well as the global impact of MISO events. These measurements will enable researchers to study physical and thermodynamic processes related to MISO.
“For India and Sri Lanka, advanced predictions are important for water resource planners. Knowing when the rains are coming in, where they’re coming from and what their tracks are as early as possible would be a significant advantage for water resource management, allowing planners to allocate those resources more efficiently,†the professor added.
Recently, Notre Dame signed a five-year MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Sri Lankan government, which will be a main hub of the measurement program.
The funding for the study comes from the US Office of Naval Research. The National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency of Sri Lanka, Maldives Climate Observatory in Hanimaadhoo, Seychelles Meteorological Authority, Army Research Laboratory, Naval Research Laboratory and Charles River Analytics are also participating in the study.