Coupling of South and East Asian Monsoon Precipitation in July–August*

The concept of the ‘‘Asian monsoon’’ masks the existence of two separate summer rainfall régimes: convective storms over India, Bangladesh, and Nepal (the South Asian monsoon) and frontal rainfall over China, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula (the East Asian monsoon). In addition, the Himalayas and other orography, including the Arakan Mountains, Ghats, and Yunnan Plateau, create smaller precipitation domains with abrupt boundaries. Amode of continental precipitation variability is identified that spans both South and East Asia during July and August. Point-to-point correlations and EOF analysis with Asian Precipitation–HighlyResolvedObservationalData IntegrationTowardEvaluation of theWaterResources (APHRODITE), a 57-yr rain gauge record, show that a dipole between the Himalayan foothills (1) and the ‘‘monsoon zone’’ (central India, 2) dominates July–August interannual variability in South Asia, and is also associated in East Asia with a tripole between the Yangtze corridor (1) and northern and southern China (2). July–August storm tracks, as shown by lag–lead correlation of rainfall, remain mostly constant between years and do not explain thismode. Instead, it is proposed that interannual change in the strength ofmoisture transport from theBay of Bengal to the Yangtze corridor across the northern Yunnan Plateau induces widespread precipitation anomalies. Abundant moisture transport along this route requires both cyclonic monsoon circulation over India and a sufficiently warmBay of Bengal, which coincide only in July andAugust. Preliminary results from the LMDZ version 5 (LMDZ5) model, run with a zoomed grid over Asia and circulation nudged toward the ECMWF reanalysis, support this hypothesis. Improved understanding of this coupling may help to project twenty-first-century precipitation changes in East and South Asia, home to over three billion people.