India’s climate system has unique features thatare often not well captured by global climate
models, the most widely used being coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea-ice-land-surface models
(AOGCMs) with a resolution of 250-300 km grids. India’s climate is dominated by the
summer or southwest monsoon (and to a lesser extent the winter or northeast monsoon) and
by the country’s physiological features such as the western and eastern ghats, the central
plateau and the Himalayas. The summer monsoon and the rains that it brings are a major
weather phenomenon in the Indian subcontinent and deeply influences the lives of its
inhabitants. It is a four-month period (June-September) when massive convective
thunderstorms dominate India's weather, and is the Earth's most productive wet season
(Collier and Webb 2002). This season provides over 80% of India’s rainfall (Bagla 2006,
2012). Thus the quantity, temporal and spatial distribution of the precipitation (rainfall)
accompanying the monsoon is its most monitored component and is particularly important for