Reconciling roles of the South China Sea summer monsoon and ENSO in prediction of the Indian Ocean dipole

Abstract

The Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) is a remarkable interannual variability in the tropical Indian Ocean. The improved prediction of IOD is of a great value because of its large socioeconomic impacts. Previous studies reported that both El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and South China Sea summer monsoon (SM) play a dominant role in the western and eastern pole of the IOD, respectively. They can be used as predictors of the IOD at 3 month lead beyond self-persistence. Here, we develop an empirical model of multi-factors in which the western pole is predicted by ENSO and persistence and the eastern pole is predicted by SM and persistence. This new empirical model outperforms largely the average level of the dynamical models from the North American multi-model ensemble (NMME) project in predicting the peak IOD in boreal autumn, with a correlation coefficient of ∼0.86 and a root mean square error of ∼0.24 °C. Furthermore, the hit rate of positive culminated IOD in this new empirical model is equivalent to that in current NMME models (above 65%), much higher than that for negative culminated IOD. This improvement of skill using the empirical model suggests a perspective for better understanding and predicting the IOD.