This study points out a significant decreasing trend in the summer monsoon rainfall over the central Indian subcontinent during the past century and suggest an important role of the rapid warming in the Indian Ocean in weakening of monsoon circulation and rainfall. Using long-term observations and coupled model experiments, this paper provides compelling evidence of the enhanced Indian Ocean warming having potential to weaken the land-sea thermal contrast, dampening summer monsoon Hadley circulation, and thereby reducing the rainfall over parts of South Asia. Read more... (Roxy M., Kapoor R., Terray P., Murtugudde R., Ashok K., Goswami B.N., Nature Communications, June 2015)

A possible link between preonset land atmospheric conditions and the Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR) is explored. It is shown that, the preonset positive (negative) rainfall anomaly over northwest India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran is associated with decrease (increase) in ISMR, primarily in the months of June and July, which in turn affects the seasonal mean. As the predictability of Indian summer monsoon relies mainly on the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the found link may further enhance our ability to predict the monsoon, particularly during a non-ENSO year. Read more... (Rai A., Saha Subodh K., Pokhrel S., Sujith K., Halder S., Jou. of Geophy. Res., May 2015))

This review article presents a detailed survey of the physical basis and the applications of both bulk microphysics parameterization and SBM. The results obtained from simulations of a wide range of atmospheric phenomena, from tropical cyclones through Arctic clouds using these two approaches are compared. Advantages, disadvantages & lines of future development for these methods are discussed. Read more... (Khain A.P., Beheng K.D., Heymsfield A., Korolev A., Krichak S.O., Levin Z., Pinsky M., Phillips V., Prabha T.V., Teller A., van den Heever S.C., Yano J-I, Revi. of Geophy., May 2015)