Abstract. The Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program sought to determine the predictability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system. The World Climate Research Programme's (WCRP) Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System (GOALS) program seeks to explore predictability of the global climate system through investigation of the major planetary heat sources and sinks, and interactions between them. The Asian-Australian monsoon system, which undergoes aperiodic and high amplitude variations on intraseasonal, annual, biennial and interannual timescales is a major focus of GOALS. Empirical seasonal forecasts of the monsoon have been made with moderate success for over 100 years. More recent modeling efforts have not been successful. Even simulation of the mean structure of the Asian monsoon has proven elusive and the observed ENSO-monsoon relationships has been difficult to replicate. Divergence in simulation skill occurs between integrations by different models or between members of ensembles of the same model. This degree of spread is surprising given the relative success of empirical forecast techniques. Two possible explanations are presented: difficulty in modeling the monsoon regions and nonlinear error growth due to regional hydrodynamical instabilities. It is argued that the reconciliation of these explanations is imperative for prediction of the monsoon to be improved. To this end, a thorough description of observed monsoon variability and the physical processes that are thought to be important is presented. Prospects of improving prediction and some strategies that may help achieve improvement are discussed. IntroductionThe annual cycle of the monsoon systems has led the inhabitants of monsoon regions to divide their lives, customs, and economies into two distinct phases: the "wet" and the "dry." The wet phase refers to the rainy season during which warm, moist, and very disturbed winds blow inland from the warm tropical oceans. The dry phase refers to the other half of the year when winds bring cool and dry air from the winter continents. This distinct variation of the annual cycle occurs over Asia, Australia, west Africa, and in the Americas. In some locations (e.g., in the Asia-Australia sector) the dry winter air flows across the equa- Agricultural practices have traditionally been tied strictly to the annual cycle. Whereas the regularity of the warm and moist and cool and dry phases of the monsoon would seem to be ideal for agricultural societies, their very regularity makes agriculture susceptible to small changes in the annual cycle. Small variations in the timing and quantity of rainfall have the potential for significant societal consequences. A weak monsoon year (i.e., significantly less total rainfall than normal) generally corresponds to low crop yields. A strong monsoon usually produces abundant crops, although too much rainfall may produce devastating floods. In addition to the importance of the strength of the overall monsoon in a particular year, forecasting the onset of the subseasonal vari...

We examined the number of tropical cyclones and cyclone days as well as tropical cyclone intensity over the past 35 years, in an environment of increasing sea surface temperature. A large increase was seen in the number and proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5. The largest increase occurred in the North Pacific, Indian, and Southwest Pacific Oceans, and the smallest percentage increase occurred in the North Atlantic Ocean. These increases have taken place while the number of cyclones and cyclone days has decreased in all basins except the North Atlantic during the past decade.

Climate variability in the Indian Ocean region seems to be, in some aspects, independent of forcing by external phenomena such as the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. But the extent to which, and how, internal coupled ocean-atmosphere dynamics determine the state of the Indian Ocean system have not been resolved. Here we present a detailed analysis of the strong seasonal anomalies in sea surface temperatures, sea surface heights, precipitation and winds that occurred in the Indian Ocean region in 1997-98, and compare the results with the record of Indian Ocean climate variability over the past 40 years. We conclude that the 1997-98 anomalies--in spite of the coincidence with the strong El Niño/Southern Oscillation event--may primarily be an expression of internal dynamics, rather than a direct response to external influences. We propose a mechanism of ocean-atmosphere interaction governing the 1997-98 event that may represent a characteristic internal mode of the Indian Ocean climate system. In the Pacific Ocean, the identification of such a mode has led to successful predictions of El Niño; if the proposed Indian Ocean internal mode proves to be robust, there may be a similar potential for predictability of climate in the Indian Ocean region.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian monsoon are shown to have undergone significant interdecadal changes in variance and coherency over the last 125 years. Wavelet analysis is applied to indexes of equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature (Niño3 SST), the Southern Oscillation index, and all-India rainfall. Time series of 2-7-yr variance indicate intervals of high ENSO-monsoon variance (1875-1920 and 1960-90) and an interval of low variance . The ENSO-monsoon variance also contains a modulation of ENSOmonsoon amplitudes on a 12-20-yr timescale.The annual-cycle (1 yr) variance time series of Niño3 SST and Indian rainfall is negatively correlated with the interannual ENSO signal. The 1-yr variance is larger during 1935-60, suggesting a negative correlation between annual-cycle variance and ENSO variance on interdecadal timescales.The method of wavelet coherency is applied to the ENSO and monsoon indexes. The Niño3 SST and Indian rainfall are found to be highly coherent, especially during intervals of high variance. The Niño3 SST and Indian rainfall are approximately 180Њ out of phase and show a gradual increase in phase difference versus Fourier period. All of the results are shown to be robust with respect to different datasets and analysis methods.

S i l M M A R YWe attempt to construct a logical framework for the deciphering of the physical processes that determine the interannual variability of the coupled climate system. Of particular interest are the causes of the 'predictability barrier' in the boreal spring when observation-prediction correlations rapidly decline. The barrier is a property of many models and occurs irrespective of what time of year a forecast is initiated. Noting that most models used in interannual prediction emphasize the coupled physics of the Pacific Ocean basin, with the intent of encapsulating the essential structure of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system, lagged Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) correlations are compared with the model results. The lagged SO1 correlations also decrease rapidly in springtime. In that sensc. the coupled ocean-atmosphere models are behaving in a manner very similar to the real system, at least as it is defined by the SOI.We propose that (i) the springtime is a period where errors may grow most rapidly in a coupled oceanatmosphere forecast model or (ii) there are other influences on the system that are not included in the simple coupled-model formulations. Both propositions are based on observations. By examining the period of correlation decrease, it is noticed that the equatorial pressure gradients tend to be a minimum at the time of the correlation decrease, suggesting that the occan-atmosphere system may be least robust during the spring and, thus, subject to error growth. At the same time the south Asian summer monsoon is growing very rapidly. As the monsoon circulation is highly variable in hoth phase and amplitude from year to year. the oceanatmosphere system may be subject to variable and impulsive forcing each spring.A monsoon intensity index. based on the magnitude of the mean summer vertical shear in the 'South Asia' region, was defined for the broad-scale monsoon. 'Strong' and 'weak' monsoon seasons wxre determined by the index and were shown to he consistent with the independent broad-scale outgoing long-wave-radiation fields. Associated with the anomalous monsoons were global scale. coherent summer circulation patterns. Of particular importance was that stronger (weaker) than average summer trade winds were associated with strong (weak) monsoon periods. Thus, a signal of the variable monsoon was detected in the low-level wind fields over the Pacific Ocean that would be communicated to the Pacific Ocean through surface stresses.A longer-period context for the anomalous summer monsoon circulation fields was sought. Based on the summer monsoon index, annual cycles for the ycars in which there were strong and weak monsoon seasons were composited. Large-scale coherent differcnccs were apparent in the circulation fields over most of the globe including south Asia and the tropical Indian Ocean as far as the previous winter and spring. Although the limited data period renders the absoluteness of thc conclusions difficult to confirm. the results indicate that the variable monsoon (an...

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Despite significant progress in the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program, a number of major hurdles remain before the primary objective, prediction of the variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system on time scales of months to years, can be achieved. Foremost among these hurdles is understanding the physics that maintains and perturbs the western Pacific warm pool, the region of the warmest sea surface temperature in the open oceans, which coexists with the largest annual precipitation and latent heat release in the atmosphere. Even though it is believed that the warm pool is a "center of action" for the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena in the ocean and the atmosphere, successful simulation of the warm pool has remained an elusive goal.To gain a clear understanding of global climate change, the ENSO phenomenon, and the intraseasonal variability of the coupled atmosphere-ocean system, it is clear that a better specification of the coupling of the ocean and the atmosphere is required. An observational and modeling program, the TOGA Coupled OceanAtmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE), has been designed to work toward this goal.The scientific goals of COARE are to describe and understand: 1) the principal processes responsible for the coupling of the ocean and the atmosphere in the western Pacific warm-pool system;2) the principal atmospheric processes that organize convection in the warm-pool region;3) the oceanic response to combined buoyancy and wind-stress forcing in the western Pacific warm-pool region; and 4) the multiple-scale interactions that extend the oceanic and atmospheric influence of the western Pacific warm-pool system to other regions and vice versa.To carry out the goals of TOGA COARE, three components of a major field experiment have been defined: interface, atmospheric, and oceanographic. An intensive observation period (IOP), embedded in a period of enhanced meteorological and oceanographic monitoring, will occur from November 1992 through February 1993 in the western Pacific region bordered by 10°N, 10°S, 140°E, and the date line. The experimental design calls for a complex set of oceanographic and meteorological observations from a variety of platforms that will carry out remote and in situ measurements. The focus of the observational effort will be in an intensive flux array (I FA) centered at 2°S and 156°E. The resulting high-quality dataset is required for the calculation of the interfacial fluxes of heat, momentum, and moisture, and to provide ground truth for a wide range of remotely sensed variables for the calibration of satellite-derived algorithms. The ultimate objective of the COARE dataset is to improve air-sea *Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado + Department of Oceanography, Honolulu, University of Hawaii ©1992 American Meteorological Society interaction and boundary-layer parameterizations in models of the ocean and the atmosphere, and to validate coupled models.