TY  - JOUR
AU  - Jain, Shipra
AU  - Turkington, Thea
AU  - Tan, Wee Leng
AU  - Schwartz, Chen
AU  - Scaife, Adam A.
AU  - Shepherd, Theodore G.
TI  - Towards developing an operational Indian ocean dipole warning system for Southeast Asia
JO  - Scientific reports
VL  - 15
IS  - 1
SN  - 2045-2322
CY  - [London]
PB  - Springer Nature
M1  - FZJ-2025-04510
SP  - 14728
PY  - 2025
AB  - Two strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) events in 2019 and 2023 led to multiple disastersover Southeast Asia, highlighting the need for warnings of IOD events. This paper presents a stocktakeof the current criteria for IOD monitoring and prediction and describes the development of anIOD warning system for Southeast Asia. We examined how subjective choices such as observationaldatasets, baseline periods, and time averaging affect IOD event identification. Our findings indicatethat the choice of sea-surface temperature dataset and time averaging (monthly vs. 3-monthly mean)lead to marked differences in the Dipole Mode Index (DMI), the index used for the monitoring andprediction of IOD events, and hence between various centers on IOD state. The southern MaritimeContinent can experience the impact of the IOD on rainfall even when the IOD has not met the currentoperational criterion, suggesting a need for an impact-based threshold for the IOD. We assess the skillof models in capturing the strength and phase of the IOD and report errors in IOD predictions. Whilemost models are skillful in capturing the active phase of the IOD, many models have an overactiveIOD strength. Calibration of DMI-based monitoring products is therefore recommended for the mostskilful IOD predictions. Finally, we describe an objective standard operating procedure to assist climateforecasters in issuing timely alerts of IOD events.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
DO  - DOI:10.1038/s41598-025-99261-9
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1048119
ER  -