Understanding the integrated moisture transport in the monsoon domain

Abstract

The identification of intense moisture pathways during the South Asian monsoon has been carried out using an algorithm developed by Yang et al(2018) over the Bay of Bengal and modifying it to identify similar pathways over the Arabian Sea. Using the Integrated Vapour Transport(IVT) fields, the moisture pathways of the low-level jet stream(LLJ) during monsoon that is known to split into two branches namely, the Arabian Sea branch and the Bay of Bengal branch, has been traced and quantified to determine their contributions to the Indian region. The column integrated moisture anomalies were used to understand the buildup of moisture before an active and a break condition over different regions of the monsoon domain.