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It is important to estimate a high-resolution spatiotemporal distribution of temperature rise under climate change for effective adaptation and mitigation planning. This paper studies the threshold crossing time (TCT) for eight Indian warming targets (IWTs) between 1.5 and 5 °C based on regional climate models (RCMs) participating in The Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)—South Asia project. To evaluate the performance of CORDEX experiments in simulating the near-surface mean temperature, the model performance index (MPI) is used which represents that the CanESM experiment performs best for simulating Tmean over India. All India average Tmean projected by the multi-model ensemble (MME) represents that 1.5 °C TCT is about 2033 ± 3 and 2028 ± 3 in RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. During the twenty-first century, Indian subcontinent can experience five IWTs (1.5–3.5 °C) under RCP4.5 and all eight under scenario RCP8.5. The fastest warming region in India is the western Himalayan region (North India) and north-west region (Indian Thar Desert). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The summer monsoon rainfall affects most of the population of the Indian subcontinent. A slight variation of strength and spatial distribution in monsoon rains has huge societal impacts. So understanding the significance of its variability and the factors that control this variability is an imperative task. The Indian monsoon (also regarded as a global phenomenon) varies with the global climatic components like geopotential height, sea surface temperature, outgoing long-wave radiation and mean sea level pressure. The paper presents a statistical analysis of rainfall (over India) and climatic components (over the Arabian Peninsula) and the relationship between them. The period (1979–2013) shows a decrease in monsoon rainfall over the country. During this period, there was an increase in the tropospheric temperature over the Arabian Peninsula. Rainfall showed a direct relationship with the tropospheric temperature and thickness that gets stronger during the period (1979–2013). Except for the northeastern region of India, the rest showed a strong positive correlation with the middle and upper tropospheric temperature over the Arabian Peninsula while the lower tropospheric temperature showed a weak relationship. However, this correlation gets weakened during the El Nino and La Nina years. The findings will be helpful to enhance the Indian rainfall variation and the climatic factors responsible for this variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]