Abstract
The relationships between observed rainfall, El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and sea surface temperature (SST) variations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans were analyzed using a 1° latitude–longitude grid over Indonesia. The Global Summary of the Day rainfall records provide 26 years of rainfall data (January 1985 to August 2010) for 23 stations throughout the Indonesian islands. The ENSO and SST variations were calculated using the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), NINO1 + 2, NINO3, NINO3.4, NINO4, the Dipole Mode Index (DMI) for the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), and Indian Ocean Basin-wide (IOBW) index. The results show that the rainfall in the southern Sumatra and southern Java Islands, which face the Indian Ocean, was positively correlated with the negative IOD, whereas the rainfall in northwestern Sumatra was positively correlated with the positive IOD. In eastern Indonesia, the rainfall was positively correlated with La Niña. The PDO index was also strongly correlated with the rainfall in this region. In central Indonesia, seasonal variations due to monsoons are predominant, and the rainfall exhibited strong negative and positive correlations with the MEI and NINO.WEST, respectively, indicating that high rainfall occurred during strong La Niña episodes. The highly negative and positive correlations with the MEI and NINO.WEST, respectively, in central Indonesia led us to analyze the impacts of Indonesian seas on the rainfall in the region. Using four synoptic-scale scenarios, we investigated the relative residence time of Indonesian seawater along the pathways associated with the Pacific-Indian hydraulic head difference. The results show that when both the western Pacific and eastern Indian Oceans are warm (positive NINO.WEST and negative DMI), the rainfall intensity over central Indonesia is strongest. This increase is explained by the relationship between the residence time of Indonesian seawater and the exposure to surface evaporation: a longer exposure of Indonesian seas results in greater seawater warming and evaporation and more convection-generated cumulus clouds.
Highlights
Water scarcity is a problem that many societies worldwide will face in the 21st century
The Pacific Ocean is in an El Niño phase, with a positive Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) value and negative NINO.WEST value, whereas the eastern Indian Ocean is in a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) period, with a positive Dipole Mode Index (DMI) value
In central Indonesia, the Malaysian-Australian monsoon plays a dominant role in the rainfall characteristics and results in distinctive seasonal variations, similar to the findings of Aldrian and Djamil [53]
Summary
Water scarcity is a problem that many societies worldwide will face in the 21st century. Rainfall is normally favored over the western Pacific warm pool, whereas the eastern and central equatorial Pacific and western Indian Ocean experience an overall drier climate, depending on the geophysical configuration of the Indo-Pacific coupled ocean-atmosphere system [1,2,3] This region experiences higher (lower) rainfall during La Niña (El Niño) events [4], and many researchers have used the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) to discuss the relationship between rainfall and ENSO in the past [5,6,7,8]. We evaluated the relationships between ENSO and SST-related climate indices of the Pacific and Indian Oceans and rainfall records from the Global Summary of the Day (GSOD) over. We provide a summary of the research
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