The Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall (ISMR) is strongly governed by large-scale ocean–atmosphere interactions, particularly the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) over the tropical Pacific and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) over the Indian Ocean. El Niño generally weakens the Indian monsoon, often leading to drought conditions, whereas La Niña enhances monsoon rainfall. Similarly, a positive IOD, characterized by warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the western Indian Ocean, strengthens the monsoon, while a negative IOD suppresses rainfall. The interaction between ENSO and IOD plays a crucial role in modulating ISMR through changes in the Walker Circulation, Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) and equatorial wind patterns. Historically, strong El Niño events without a compensating positive IOD have resulted in severe droughts, whereas a positive IOD can offset El Niño impacts. In 2026, one of the strongest El Niño events in recent decades coincided with a neutral IOD during the early monsoon, contributing to reduced rainfall. As the IOD transitions towards a positive phase, it is expected to partially mitigate the adverse influence of El Niño on the remainder of the monsoon season. Read More..
Collaborations
Extreme Rainfall Prediction and CO2 Source-Sink Assessment
NRSC-ISRO & IISc Collaboration on Extreme Rainfall Prediction and CO2 Source-Sink Assessment
Estimation of CO2 fluxes in the shaded coffee ecosystem region of Karnataka
Collaboration with Central Coffee Research Institute for the Carbon Flux Studies with Eddy Covariance in the shaded coffee ecosystem region of Karnataka
Monitoring and assessment of Air Pollution (MAAP) using IOT sensors
A prototype solution to monitor the air quality on CO, PM2.5 and PM10 using cost effective IoT sensors is developed and demonstrated at “Smart City Hackathon 2018"
Continuous CO2 flux information to study the carbon net-energy in the temperate ecosystem is being generated using an eddy covariance flux tower.
Publications
Unravelling the Interannual Changes in the Decade Observations of GHGs as Climate Indicators
Interannual variations of CO2 and CH4 for a decade between the years 2013 and 2022 over the suburban city of Shadnagar, near Hyderabad, India is reported here. Know More..
Wind power potential over India using ERA5 reanalysis
In this study, we estimate wind power potential at 100 m level over the Indian domain using data from the ERA5 reanalysis for 1979–2018 through the Weibull mixture distribution. Visit
Deciphering the Signatures of Oceanic Convective Rain Cells
In this paper, we have used C-band SAR images and near-simultaneous observations from the global precipitation measurements (GPM) to study the signatures of multiple convective rain cells. Read More..