Assimilation of sea surface temperature into CECOM by flux correction

Sea surface temperature (SST) from a near real-time data set produced from satellites data has been assimilated into a coupled ice–ocean forecasting model (Canadian East Coast Ocean Model) using an efficient data assimilation method. The method is based on an optimal interpolation scheme by which SST is melded into the model through the adjustment of surface heat flux. The magnitude and space–time variation of the adjustment depend on the depth of heat diffusion into the water column in response to changes in surface flux, the correlation time scale of the data, and model and data errors. The diffusion depth is scaled by the eddy diffusivity for temperature. The ratio of the model and data errors is treated as an adjustable parameter. To evaluate the quality of the assimilation, the results from the model with and without assimilation are compared to independent ship data from the Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program and the World Ocean Circulation Experiment. It is shown that the assimilation has a significant impact on the modeled SST, reducing the root mean square difference (RMSD) between the model SST and the ship SST by 0.63°C or 37%. The RMSD of the assimilated SST is smaller than that of the satellite SST by 0.23°C. This suggests that model simulations or predictions with data assimilation can provide the best estimate of the true SST. A sensitivity study is performed to examine the change of the model RMSD with the adjustable parameter in the assimilation equation. The results show that there is an optimal value of the parameter and the model SST is not very sensitive to the parameter.     

Numerical simulation and data assimilation of the water-energy cycle over semiarid northeastern China

The default fractional vegetation cover and terrain height were replaced by the estimated fractional vegetation cover, which was calculated by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI) of Earth Observing System Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer(EOS-MODIS) and the Digital Elevation Model of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission(SRTM) system. The near-surface meteorological elements over northeastern China were assimilated into the three-dimensional variational data assimilation system(3DVar) module in the Weather Research and Forecasting(WRF) model. The structure and daily variations of air temperature, humidity, wind and energy fields over northeastern China were simulated using the WRF model. Four groups of numerical experiments were performed, and the simulation results were analyzed of latent heat flux, sensible heat flux, and their relationships with changes in the surface energy flux due to soil moisture and precipitation over different surfaces. The simulations were compared with observations of the stations Tongyu, Naiman, Jinzhou, and Miyun from June to August, 2009. The results showed that the WRF model achieves high-quality simulations of the diurnal characteristics of the surface layer temperature, wind direction, net radiation, sensible heat flux, and latent heat flux over semiarid northeastern China in the summer. The simulated near-surface temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed were improved in the data assimilation case(Case 2) compared with control case(Case 1). The simulated sensible heat fluxes and surface heat fluxes were improved by the land surface parameterization case(Case 3) and the combined case(Case 4). The simulated temporal variations in soil moisture over the northeastern arid areas agree well with observations in Case 4, but the simulated precipitation should be improved in the WRF model. This study could improve the land surface parameters by utilizing remote sensing data and could further improve atmospheric elements with a data assimilation system. This work provides an effective attempt at combining multi-source data with different spatial and temporal scales into numerical simulations. The assimilation datasets generated by this work can be applied to research on climate change and environmental monitoring of arid lands, as well as research on the formation and stability of climate over semiarid areas.     

Intercomparison across scales between remotely-sensed land surface temperature and representative equilibrium temperature from a distributed energy water balance model

Abstract

Quantifying the reliability of distributed hydrological models is an important task in hydrology to understand their ability to estimate energy and water fluxes at the agricultural district scale as well the basin scale for water resources management in drought monitoring and flood forecasting. In this context, the paper presents an intercomparison of simulated representative equilibrium temperature (RET) derived from a distributed energy water balance model and remotely-sensed land surface temperature (LST) at spatial scales from the agricultural field to the river basin. The main objective of the study is to evaluate the use of LST retrieved from operational remote sensing data at different spatial and temporal resolutions for the internal validation of a distributed hydrological model to control its mass balance accuracy as a complementary method to traditional calibration with discharge measurements at control river cross-sections. Modelled and observed LST from different radiometric sensors located on the ground surface, on an aeroplane and a satellite are compared for a maize field in Landriano (Italy), the agricultural district of Barrax (Spain) and the Upper Po River basin (Italy). A good ability of the model in reproducing the observed LST values in terms of mean bias error, root mean square error, relative error and Nash-Sutcliffe index is shown.

Editor Z.W. Kundzewicz; Associate editor D. Gerten     

A land surface data assimilation framework using the land information system: Description and applications

The Land Information System (LIS) is an established land surface modeling framework that integrates various community land surface models, ground measurements, satellite-based observations, high performance computing and data management tools. The use of advanced software engineering principles in LIS allows interoperability of individual system components and thus enables assessment and prediction of hydrologic conditions at various spatial and temporal scales. In this work, we describe a sequential data assimilation extension of LIS that incorporates multiple observational sources, land surface models and assimilation algorithms. These capabilities are demonstrated here in a suite of experiments that use the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) and assimilation through direct insertion. In a soil moisture experiment, we discuss the impact of differences in modeling approaches on assimilation performance. Provided careful choice of model error parameters, we find that two entirely different hydrological modeling approaches offer comparable assimilation results. In a snow assimilation experiment, we investigate the relative merits of assimilating different types of observations (snow cover area and snow water equivalent). The experiments show that data assimilation enhancements in LIS are uniquely suited to compare the assimilation of various data types into different land surface models within a single framework. The high performance infrastructure provides adequate support for efficient data assimilation integrations of high computational granularity.     

Spatio-temporal exploratory analysis of urban surface temperature field in Shanghai, China

The integrated application of remote sensing, geographic information system and quantitative analytical modeling can provide scientific and effective methods for monitoring and studying urban heat island, based on land surface temperature (LST) retrieved from thermal infrared channel data of sensors. In this paper, LST is retrieved from Landsat TM6 and ETM + 6 data of Shanghai central city in 1989, 1997, 2000 and 2002, by using the mono-window algorithm. Based on the data, global and local spatial autocorrelation analysis, and geostatistical methods are adopted to quantitatively describe the characteristics of spatial heterogeneity and temporal evolution of land surface thermal landscape at different scales and periods in Shanghai central city, by utilizing exploratory spatial data analysis. Results show that LST field in Shanghai central city tends to fragmentize and complicate with the development of Shanghai, and its global spatial difference becomes greater gradually. The spatial variance pattern of the change of LST field from 1997 to 2002 indicates that the dynamic change of LST presents a tendency of increase in circularity. LST declines distinctly in the districts of Puxi and Pudong near and inside the inner ring road, while it rises obviously outside the central city and near the out ring road. The extrema of temporal change in LST field have a characteristic of spatial clustering. Besides, as the city of Shanghai expands in a circular pattern as a whole, the directional difference of dynamic change of urban surface thermal landscape exists but is not very obvious.     

Exploring the effect of data assimilation by WRF‐3DVar for numerical rainfall prediction with different types of storm events

The mesoscale Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model is gaining popularity among the hydrometeorological community in providing high‐resolution rainfall forecasts at the catchment scale. Although the performance of the model has been verified in capturing the physical processes of severe storm events, the modelling accuracy is negatively affected by significant errors in the initial conditions used to drive the model. Several meteorological investigations have shown that the assimilation of real‐time observations, especially the radar data can help improve the accuracy of the rainfall predictions given by mesoscale NWP models. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of data assimilation for hydrological applications at the catchment scale. Radar reflectivity together with surface and upper‐air meteorological observations is assimilated into the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model using the three‐dimensional variational data‐assimilation technique. Improvement of the rainfall accumulation and its temporal variation after data assimilation is examined for four storm events in the Brue catchment (135.2 km²) located in southwest England. The storm events are selected with different rainfall distributions in space and time. It is found that the rainfall improvement is most obvious for the events with one‐dimensional evenness in either space or time. The effect of data assimilation is even more significant in the innermost domain which has the finest spatial resolution. However, for the events with two‐dimensional unevenness of rainfall, i.e. the rainfall is concentrated in a small area and in a short time period, the effect of data assimilation is not ideal. WRF fails in capturing the whole process of the highly convective storm with densely concentrated rainfall in a small area and a short time period. A shortened assimilation time interval together with more efficient utilisation of the weather radar data might help improve the effectiveness of data assimilation in such cases. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coupled assimilation for an intermediated coupled ENSO prediction model

The value of coupled assimilation is discussed using an intermediate coupled model in which the wind stress is the only atmospheric state which is slavery to model sea surface temperature (SST). In the coupled assimilation analysis, based on the coupled wind–ocean state covariance calculated from the coupled state ensemble, the ocean state is adjusted by assimilating wind data using the ensemble Kalman filter. As revealed by a series of assimilation experiments using simulated observations, the coupled assimilation of wind observations yields better results than the assimilation of SST observations. Specifically, the coupled assimilation of wind observations can help to improve the accuracy of the surface and subsurface currents because the correlation between the wind and ocean currents is stronger than that between SST and ocean currents in the equatorial Pacific. Thus, the coupled assimilation of wind data can decrease the initial condition errors in the surface/subsurface currents that can significantly contribute to SST forecast errors. The value of the coupled assimilation of wind observations is further demonstrated by comparing the prediction skills of three 12-year (1997–2008) hindcast experiments initialized by the ocean-only assimilation scheme that assimilates SST observations, the coupled assimilation scheme that assimilates wind observations, and a nudging scheme that nudges the observed wind stress data, respectively. The prediction skills of two assimilation schemes are significantly better than those of the nudging scheme. The prediction skills of assimilating wind observations are better than assimilating SST observations. Assimilating wind observations for the 2007/2008 La Niña event triggers better predictions, while assimilating SST observations fails to provide an early warning for that event.     

Simultaneous estimation of soil moisture and hydraulic parameters using residual resampling particle filter

Land data assimilation (DA) has gradually developed into an important earth science research method because of its ability to combine model simulations and observations. Integrating new observations into a land surface model by the DA method can correct the predicted trajectory of the model and thus, improve the accuracy of state variables. It can also reduce uncertainties in the model by estimating some model parameters simultaneously. Among the various DA methods, the particle filter is free from the constraints of linear models and Gaussian error distributions, and can be applicable to any nonlinear and non-Gaussian state-space model; therefore, its importance in land data assimilation research has increased. In this study, a DA scheme was developed based on the residual resampling particle filter. Microwave brightness temperatures were assimilated into the macro-scale semi-distributed variance infiltration capacity model to estimate the surface soil moisture and three hydraulic parameters simultaneously. Finally, to verify the scheme, a series of comparative experiments was performed with experimental data obtained during the Soil Moisture Experiment of 2004 in Arizona. The results show that the scheme can improve the accuracy of soil moisture estimations significantly. In addition, the three hydraulic parameters were also well estimated, demonstrating the effectiveness of the DA scheme.     

Evaluating the dual‐boundary forcing concept in subsurface–land surface interactions of the hydrological cycle

Subsurface and land surface processes (e.g. groundwater flow, evapotranspiration) of the hydrological cycle are connected via complex feedback mechanisms, which are difficult to analyze and quantify. In this study, the dual‐boundary forcing concept that reveals space–time coherence between groundwater dynamics and land surface processes is evaluated. The underlying hypothesis is that a simplified representation of groundwater dynamics may alter the variability of land surface processes, which may eventually affect the prognostic capability of a numerical model. A coupled subsurface–land surface model ParFlow.CLM is applied over the Rur catchment, Germany, and the mass and energy fluxes of the coupled water and energy cycles are simulated over three consecutive years considering three different lower boundary conditions (dynamic, constant, and free‐drainage) based on groundwater dynamics to substantiate the aforementioned hypothesis. Continuous wavelet transform technique is applied to analyze scale‐dependent variability of the simulated mass and energy fluxes. The results show clear differences in temporal variability of latent heat flux simulated by the model configurations with different lower boundary conditions at monthly to multi‐month time scales (~32–91 days) especially under soil moisture limited conditions. The results also suggest that temporal variability of latent heat flux is affected at even smaller time scales (~1–3 days) if a simple gravity drainage lower boundary condition is considered in the coupled model. This study demonstrates the importance of a physically consistent representation of groundwater dynamics in a numerical model, which may be important to consider in local weather prediction models and water resources assessments, e.g. drought prediction. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial characterization of land surface energy fluxes and uncertainty estimation at the Salar de Atacama,Northern Chile

We use Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer (ASTER) data to estimate spatial energy flux and evaporation distributions at the Salar de Atacama, a playa in Northern Chile. Our approach incorporates ASTER surface kinetic temperature, emissivity, and reflectance data, ground-based meteorological measurements, and empirical parameters. Energy flux distributions are estimated using either spatially constant or spatially distributed values of model parameters, with spatially distributed parameters assigned separately to each land cover category in an image classification. We test the sensitivity of energy budget calculations to state variable and parameter values by conducting Monte Carlo simulations for regions with ground energy budget measurements. Results show that assigning spatially distributed model parameters via land cover classifications yields significant improvements to ground and sensible heat flux predictions. Latent heat fluxes cannot, however, be predicted with sufficient accuracy to allow estimation of area-integrated evaporative moisture loss at this low-evaporation playa.     

A soil moisture assimilation scheme based on the ensemble Kalman filter using microwave brightness temperature

This study presents a soil moisture assimilation scheme, which could assimilate microwave brightness temperature directly, based on the ensemble Kalman filter and the shuffled complex evolution method (SCE-UA). It uses the soil water model of the land surface model CLM3.0 as the forecast operator, and a radiative transfer model (RTM) as the observation operator in the assimilation system. The assimilation scheme is implemented in two phases: the parameter calibration phase and the pure soil moisture assimilation phase. The vegetation optical thickness and surface roughness parameters in the RTM are calibrated by SCE-UA method and the optimal parameters are used as the final model parameters of the observation operator in the assimilation phase. The ideal experiments with synthetic data indicate that this scheme could significantly improve the simulation of soil moisture at the surface layer. Furthermore, the estimation of soil moisture in the deeper layers could also be improved to a certain extent. The real assimilation experiments with AMSR-E brightness temperature at 10.65 GHz (vertical polarization) show that the root mean square error (RMSE) of soil moisture in the top layer (0–10 cm) by assimilation is 0.03355 m³ · m⁻³, which is reduced by 33.6% compared with that by simulation (0.05052 m³ · m⁻³). The mean RMSE by assimilation for the deeper layers (10–50 cm) is also reduced by 20.9%. All these experiments demonstrate the reasonability of the assimilation scheme developed in this study.     

GMS 5资料反演地表温度的一个修正算法

本文研究发展利用GMS 5/VISSR每小时卫星观测资料反演地表温度的方法,首先利用时空判断法进行云检测寻找晴空像元,然后从辐射传输方程出发,由实时探空资料求取大气上行、下行辐射率及大气透过率,根据由AVHRR NDVI导出的地表比辐射率,用单时相双光谱分裂窗法反演得到地表温度.比较反演结果与54511站及其他中国基准站2000年地面0cm地表温度实测值,相对于国际上其他经验公式而言,本文算法在精度上有所提高.敏感性分析试验着重于大气衰减的影响.基于本文算法,给出了内蒙中东部地区地表温度连续4天的变化实例以及东亚部分陆地“纯晴天”地表温度图.     

HydroBlocks: a field‐scale resolving land surface model for application over continental extents

Land surface spatial heterogeneity plays a significant role in the water, energy, and carbon cycles over a range of temporal and spatial scales. Until now, the representation of this spatial heterogeneity in land surface models has been limited to over simplistic schemes because of computation and environmental data limitations. This study introduces HydroBlocks – a novel land surface model that represents field‐scale spatial heterogeneity of land surface processes through interacting hydrologic response units (HRUs). HydroBlocks is a coupling between the Noah‐MP land surface model and the Dynamic TOPMODEL hydrologic model. The HRUs are defined by clustering proxies of the drivers of spatial heterogeneity using high‐resolution land data. The clustering mechanism allows for each HRU's results to be mapped out in space, facilitating field‐scale application and validation. The Little Washita watershed in the USA is used to assess HydroBlocks' performance and added benefit from traditional land surface models. A comparison between the semi‐distributed and fully distributed versions of the model suggests that using 1000 HRUs is sufficient to accurately approximate the fully distributed solution. A preliminary evaluation of model performance using available in situ soil moisture observations suggests that HydroBlocks is generally able to reproduce the observed spatial and temporal dynamics of soil moisture. Model performance deficiencies can be primarily attributed to parameter uncertainty. HydroBlocks' ability to explicitly resolve field‐scale spatial heterogeneity while only requiring an increase in computation of one to two orders of magnitude when compared with existing land surface models is encouraging – ensemble field‐scale land surface modelling over continental extents is now possible. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

卫星遥感数据评估黄土高原陆面干湿程度研究

卫星遥感数据具有估算时空尺度上地表参量的优势,在陆地环境状况评估和监测等方面有很大的应用潜力.本文利用美国地球观测系统卫星搭载中等分辨率成像光谱仪（EOS/MODIS）在黄土高原2002-2010年期间获取的每16天归一化植被指数（NDVI）和每日地表温度（LST）数据,分析了黄土高原地区LST-NDVI空间的基本特征.结果发现：当研究区域足够大且遥感数据时间序列足够长时,LST-NDVI空间中（NDVI,LST）散点并非呈三角形或梯形分布.为了能够利用EOS/MODIS的NDVI和LST数据正确地评估陆面的干湿状况,本文给出了利用数据集合法确定LST-NDVI空间中干边和湿边的数值,即在LST-NDVI空间中,利用NDVI等值区间内LST最大值和最小值的集合代表干边和湿边的数值,并进一步证明了在LST-NDVI空间中干边和湿边数值并非呈线性关系.在分析LST-NDVI空间特征的基础上,通过构建地表温度-植被干旱指数（TVDI）,探讨其在评估黄土高原地区陆面的干湿状况的应用潜力.结果表明：由TVDI距平表征的陆面的干湿程度与局地降水距平有很好的关联性,二者在时空分布上有较好的对应关系.在我国陇东黄土高原塬区,TDVI数值与地面观测的表层土壤湿度有很好的相关性,相关系数在0.67以上,并通过显著性为1%的检验.由此说明：如果合理选取干边和湿边的数值,TDVI可应用于区域陆面干湿程度的客观评估.     

Establishment and analysis of a High-Resolution Assimilation Dataset of the water-energy cycle in China

For better prediction and understanding of land-atmospheric interaction, in-situ observed meteorological data acquired from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) were assimilated in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the monthly Green Vegetation Coverage (GVF) data, which was calculated using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of the Earth Observing System Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (EOS-MODIS) and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) system. Furthermore, the WRF model produced a High-Resolution Assimilation Dataset of the water-energy cycle in China (HRADC). This dataset has a horizontal resolution of 25 km for near surface meteorological data, such as air temperature, humidity, wind vectors and pressure (19 levels); soil temperature and moisture (four levels); surface temperature; downward/upward short/long radiation; 3-h latent heat flux; sensible heat flux; and ground heat flux. In this study, we 1) briefly introduce the cycling 3D-Var assimilation method and 2) compare results of meteorological elements, such as 2 m temperature and precipitation generated by the HRADC with the gridded observation data from CMA, and surface temperature and specific humidity with Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) output data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). We find that the simulated results of monthly 2 m temperature from HRADC is improved compared with the control simulation and has effectively reproduced the observed patterns. The simulated special distribution of ground surface temperature and specific humidity from HRADC are much closer to GLDAS outputs. The spatial distribution of root mean square errors (RMSE) and bias of 2 m temperature between observations and HRADC is reduced compared with the bias between observations and the control run. The monthly spatial distribution of surface temperature and specific humidity from HRADC is consistent with the GLDAS outputs over China. This study could improve the land surface parameters by utilizing remote sensing data and could further improve atmospheric elements with a data assimilation system. This work provides an effective attempt at combining multi-source data with different spatial and temporal scales into numerical simulations, and the simulated results could be used in further research on the long-term climatic effects and characteristics of the water-energy cycle over China.     

Some Physical and Computational Issues in Land Surface Data Assimilation of Satellite Skin Temperatures

Skin temperatures that reflect the radiating temperature of a surface observed by infrared radiometers are one of the most widely available products from polar orbiting and geostationary satellites and the most commonly used satellite data in land surface assimilation. Past work has indicated that a simple land surface scheme with a few key parameters constrained by observations such as skin temperatures may be preferable to complex land use schemes with many unknown parameters. However, a true radiating skin temperature is sometimes not a prognostic variable in weather forecast models. Additionally, recent research has shown that skin temperatures cannot be directly used in surface similarity forms for inferring fluxes. This paper examines issues encountered in using satellite derived skin temperatures to improve surface flux specifications in weather forecast and air quality models. Attention is given to iterations necessary when attempting to nudge the surface energy budget equation to a desired state. Finally, the issue of mathematical operator splitting is examined in which the surface energy budget calculations are split with the atmospheric vertical diffusion calculations. However, the high level of connectivity between the surface and first atmospheric level means that the operator splitting leads to high frequency oscillations. These oscillations may hinder the assimilation of skin temperature derived moisture fluxes.     

Impact of Land Surface Processes on the South Asian Monsoon Simulations Using WRF Modeling System

The Weather Research and Forecasting model has been used to examine the role of land surface processes on Indian summer monsoon simulations. Isolated experiments have been carried out with physical parameterization schemes (land surface and planetary boundary layer) and data assimilation to examine their relative roles in the representation of regional hydroclimate in model simulations. The impact of vegetation green fraction on the model simulations has been extensively studied by replacing the default United States Geological Survey (USGS) vegetation cover data with that of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) data. Results indicate that differences in the treatment of surface processes in the model lead to large differences in precipitation simulation over the Indian domain. Several hydroclimate parameters from the simulations using ISRO and USGS vegetation green fractions were examined. It is seen that the role of vegetation green fraction in these experiments has been to increase latent heat flux to the atmosphere. Two sets of data assimilation experiments were also carried out for an entire year using the same set of observed data but with different land surface parameterization schemes. It is found that evenwhen using the same observed data, the differences in land surface schemes reduce the impact and contribution of observed data being assimilated into the model. The hydroclimate over the region becomes a function of the land surface scheme. This study highlights the importance of vegetation green fraction and land surface schemes in the context of the regional hydroclimate over South Asia.     

Numerical Simulation of the Sensitivity of Summer Monsoon Circulation and Rainfall over India to Land Surface Processes

—The influence of soil moisture and vegetation variation on simulation of monsoon circulation and rainfall is investigated. For this purpose a simple land surface parameterization scheme is incorporated in a three-dimensional regional high resolution nested grid atmospheric model. Based on the land surface parameterization scheme, latent heat and sensible heat fluxes are explicitly estimated over the entire domain of the model. Two sensitivity studies are conducted; one with bare dry soil conditions (no latent heat flux from land surface) and the other with realistic representation of the land surface parameters such as soil moisture, vegetation cover and landuse patterns in the numerical simulation. The sensitivity of main monsoon features such as Somali jet, monsoon trough and tropical easterly jet to land surface processes are discussed.¶Results suggest the necessity of including a detailed land surface parameterization in the realistic short-range weather numerical predictions. An enhanced short-range prediction of hydrological cycle including precipitation was produced by the model, with land surface processes parameterized. This parameterization appears to simulate all the main circulation features associated with the summer monsoon in a realistic manner.     

Hydroclimatic teleconnection between global sea surface temperature and rainfall over India at subdivisional monthly scale

It is well established that sea surface temperature (SST) plays a significant role in the hydrologic cycle in which precipitation is the most important part. In this study, the influence of SST on Indian subdivisional monthly rainfall is investigated. Both spatial and temporal influences are investigated. The most influencing regions of sea surface are identified for different subdivisions and for different overlapping seasons in the year. The relative importance of SST, land surface temperature (LST) and ocean–land temperature contrast (OLTC) and their variation from subdivision to subdivision and from season to season are also studied. It is observed that LST does not show much similarity with rainfall series, but, in general, OLTC shows relatively higher influence in the pre‐monsoon and early monsoon periods, whereas SST plays a more important role in late‐ and post‐monsoon periods. The influence of OLTC is seen to be mostly confined to the Indian Ocean region, whereas the effect of SST indicates the climatic teleconnection between Indian regional rainfall and climate indices in Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.