New regression model for Indian summer monsoon rainfall

Summary Based on the study of 45 years (1948–1992) data, the average lowest MSL pressure of heat low over central Pakistan and adjoining northwest India of the month of May is found to have potential as a parameter for predicting all India Summer monsoon seasonal rainfall. This new parameter is seen to have stable and significant correlation with monsoon rainfall. Its correlation coefficients for different periods are found significant at 0.1% to 1% level of significance. The stability of the correlation coefficients was tested using 10, 20 and 30 year sliding windows. This test revealed that it is the most dependable parameter in comparison with 7 of the well known parameters analysed in this study. Regression models have been developed considering this new parameter along with other circulation parameters. The regression models developed are seen to perform very well for the independent data. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values of some of these models, for independent data, are smaller than those of similar regression models reported in literature.With 8 Figures