Figure 3: Correlation between western Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures and monsoon precipitation. | Nature Communications

Figure 3: Correlation between western Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures and monsoon precipitation.

From: Drying of Indian subcontinent by rapid Indian Ocean warming and a weakening land-sea thermal gradient

Figure 3

Correlation between SST over the western Indian Ocean (WIO, 50-65°E, 5°S-10°N) and precipitation over the South Asian subcontinent, for (a) HadISST and IMD precipitation, and (b) ERSST and CRU precipitation, for June–September 1901–2012. Contours denote regions significant at the 95% confidence level. The inset box includes parts of the central Indian subcontinent where the weakening trend in precipitation is significant (c) Time series of SST anomalies (°C, red) over western Indian Ocean along with CRU (blue) precipitation (mm day−1) over central Indian subcontinent (80–90°E, 20–30°N, inset box in b), smoothed with a 10 year moving average. Note that the correlation coefficient (r=−0.34) between HadISST and CRU precipitation is estimated using non-smoothed time series. Kendall’s rank correlation test for the two variables provided a tau coefficient of −0.3 (P<0.01, two tailed). Mann–Kendall test for the trend in the time series provided a tau coefficient of 0.6 for SST and −0.2 for precipitation, both significant at 95% confidence level.

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