A study on the number of snow days over Eurasia, Indian rainfall and seasonal circulations

Abstract

In this paper, the relationship between seasonal mean (June, July, August and September) monsoon circulation features and the midlatitude circulations in winter and spring seasons have been examined during contrasting years of more (less) number of snow days in winter/spring followed by deficient (excess) Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall (ISMR) using NCEP/NCAR reanalyzed data for the period 1966–1994. The Historical Soviet Daily Snow Depth (HSDSD) version II data set has been used to calculate the number of days of snow over west and east Eurasia separately under three classes: class 1 for SD>5 cm, class 2 for SD>10 cm and class 3 for SD>50 cm where SD stands for snow depth. Correlation coefficients are computed between the anomaly in the number of days of snow depth under the above three classes during winter/spring over west and east Eurasia and the subsequent ISMR. HSDSD data show that difference in the number of days of SD>10 cm in two extreme years is most prominent in the west Eurasia in the months of January and April. Also the anomaly in the number of days of snow in January and April over west Eurasia has correlation coefficients of −0.69 and −0.56 with the following ISMR, respectively at 0.1% significance level when the SD is more than 10 cm at all the stations. Results also show that low-level atmospheric temperature difference between two extreme years of snow days in winter is up to 10 °C and the cooling persists up to spring season with a difference of 2 °C. This cooling persistence may give rise to anomalous cyclonic circulations over the midlatitudes and tropics which may be responsible for weakening the monsoon circulation over India during the year of more snow days over west Eurasia.