The correlations between the Nino-3.4 SSTs for
different months January–September and for different
seasons showed, in general, a positive tendency
with WMR over coastal Andhra Pradesh
during 1950–1999. Correlations with 20-year sliding
window show that the positive relationship is
highly remarkable in the recent four decades (1959
onwards) particularly for September and the correlations
in the recent four decades range from
0.37 to 0.66 (figure 2, table 3). The overall correlation
coefficient for the recent four decades is
0.39, which is significant at 5% level. From 1966
onwards the relationship between the August SSTs
and rainfall is significant and the correlations vary
from 0.49 to 0.71. The SSTs in April, May, June
and July have been maintaining significant positive
relationships from 1971, 1968, 1968 and 1966
respectively. When compared to the relationships
corresponding to different seasons, the relationships
with the individual months September and
August are more effective. Singh and Chattopadhyay
(1998) also related the Nino 3 and 4 SST
in different seasons with WMR over Tamilnadu
and south Peninsular India. Their correlations are
less and range from 0.25 to 0.53. Further, Jayanthi
and Govindachari (1999) obtained a correlation
of 0.66 between the total Nino-3.4 SST during
January through August and WMR over Tamilnadu
for the period of 20 years (1978–1997) and
reported 10-year lag correlations ranging from 0.3
to 0.8. The September SST positive tendency with
the rain in this study is appreciable and will be
useful to assess the WMR over coastal Andhra
Pradesh.