Indian summer monsoon and its teleconnection with Pacific decadal variability

Abstract The climate system exhibits various modes of internal natural variability. The successful simulation and prediction of these modes can increase confidence in the coupled global climate models used for climate predictions. In this chapter, an attempt has been made to understand the linkage between the Pacific decadal variability and the Indian summer monsoon rainfall and to scrutinize the physical mechanism associated with it. The results reveal that the natural climate variability on decadal-to-multidecadal timescales in the Pacific Ocean influences the Indian rainfall, which raises the possibility that the decadal sea surface temperature variability of the Pacific, relatively smaller in variance compared to El Nino-Southern Oscillation, may provide supplementary information that may improve monsoon predictions over India.