Unraveling the spatial diversity of Indian precipitation teleconnections via nonlinear multi-scale approach

Abstract. A better understanding of precipitation dynamics in the Indian subcontinent is required since India’s society depends heavily on reliable monsoon forecasts. We introduce a nonlinear, multiscale approach, based on wavelets and event synchronization, for unraveling teleconnection influences on precipitation. We consider those climate patterns with highest relevance for Indian precipitation. Our results suggest significant influences which are not well captured by only the wavelet coherence analysis, the state-of-the-art method in understanding linkages at multiple time scales. We find substantial variation across India and across time scales. In particular, El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) mainly influence precipitation in the southeast at interannual and decadal scales, respectively, whereas the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has a strong connection to precipitation particularly in the northern regions. The effect of PDO stretches across the whole country, whereas AMO influences precipitation particularly in the central arid and semi-arid regions. The proposed method provides a powerful approach for capturing the dynamics of precipitation and, hence, helps improving precipitation forecasting.