Low monsoon rainfall in NE:

• Northeast India, one of the wettest places on the Earth has been experiencing rapid drying, especially in the last 30
• Some places which used to get as high as 3,000 mm of rain during the monsoon season have seen a drop of about 25-30%.
• This decreasing monsoon rainfall is associated with natural changes in the subtropical Pacific Ocean
• The team used observed rainfall and sea surface temperature data for the period 1901-2014 for the
• The results show out that the reduction in rainfall during a major part of the last 114 years may be associated with global man-made factors, while the trend during the last 36 years is associated with natural phenomena.
• Only about 7% of the rainfall in this region is associated with local moisture recycling, which means that anthropogenic activities can affect only this small Percentage
• So the rapid drying is a part of inter-decadal variability of monsoonal rainfall which is strongly associated with the PDO

Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO):

• PDO is a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate
• Both PDO and ENSO have similar spatial climate fingerprints yet the major difference is that PDO persists for 20-30 years while the typical ENSO persists for 6 to 18
• The PDO, like ENSO, consists of a warm and cool phase which alters upper level atmospheric
• During a “warm”, or “positive”, phase, the west Pacific becomes cooler and part of the eastern ocean warms; during a “cool” or “negative” phase, the opposite pattern
• Shifts in the PDO phase can intensify or diminish the impacts of ENSO according to its phase.
• If both ENSO and the PDO are in the same phase, it is believed that El Niño/La Nina impacts may be
• This in turn affects the northeast Indian summer monsoon during its negative
• Conversely, if ENSO and the PDO are out of phase, it has been proposed that they may offset one another, preventing “true” ENSO impacts from occurring.