Active and break spells of summer monsoon over Bangladesh

Abstract

This study examines the intraseasonal variability of the southwest summer monsoon over Bangladesh using rainfall data from rain gauge stations of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) collected over 30 years (1988–2017). In this paper, active and break spells are defined as periods during the peak monsoon months of July and August, in which the daily precipitation lasts for three or more days at 0.5 above and below the daily climatological cycle. The active and break phases of the monsoon over a period of 10 years (2008–2017) were also analyzed by The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulation for analysing synoptic conditions. The model simulations for each year were done for the period of 1 May to 30 September with 1 May as the initial condition with a single domain of 30 km resolution and 19 vertical levels. The final operational global analysis data from the Global Forecasting System of National Centers for Environment Prediction (NCEP-FNL) with resolution 1° × 1° is used for model simulation. The model-simulated daily rainfall, Sea Level Pressure (SLP), wind pattern at 850 hPa, 200 hPa, and Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) are compared with the observations from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), ERA5 (ERA5 is the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts fifth-gen global atmospheric reanalysis data), and Kalpana-1. This study also finds that the increase in rainfall is concurrent with a southwesterly wind and the decrease of rainfall simultaneously occurs with a southeasterly wind. Active days were found to have lower OLR values and lower SLP than break days.