on my research work at Hokkaido University 
Monsoon, oh how thy rule the daily life of petty Indians!!
The minds, the economy, the agriculture, the life and prosperity and happiness of Indian subcontinent heavily depend on the ups and downs of the monsoon. Those rains bring mixed feelings. Oh the picture of the students running with uniforms and school bags drenched in water, the rushing vehicles splashing muddy water on the pedestrians, tiny paper boats sailing thru, these are some of the daily shots from my part of the world in kerala. Everyone but are unanimous in heartily welcoming the first spell of rains, as they bring a relief from the hot summer days. When it rains every day and for long time but it used to give nightmares to daddy cuz if it rained too much, our rubber trees can’t be milked and poor me won’t be able to buy new pants n shirts n shoes hehe. That is how monsoon used to affect me other than the several nights when the power went off for days [when the winds n the rain throw the trees n branches over the electric lines or when the water level in the dams are low], several days when the thunderstorms warned me not to come out, several days when coming from school or college my shoes weighed a ton from the water soaked in. Ya it affected me too as a change of season and daily routine of taking umbrellas but not as much as some other small farmers whose daily bread depended on it. Our part of India was mostly blessed with plenty rain during the monsoons.
Rains all over India, dances in different proportions, giving variabilities in space and time. Some parts of India like western ghats[southwest India] and the ganges mahanadi basin [central east India] receives rain in plenitude while other parts like tamil nadu in the south east and the north western parts of India receive weak rainfall. Droughts, floods happen at the same time at different corners of the subcontinent. Agricultural sector, Indian economy, daily life all listen to the rhythm of rain. The peacock’s dance or the curves of the eyebrows of a farmer on his field used to give signals on the monsoon. Now here lying around on my desk are so many plots and charts and I’m trying to find out such signals and curves which can write out some of the short paragraphs out of the epic called monsoon.
To put it simply, I’m having a look at the subseasonal variability of air sea interaction over the Indian Ocean and how it influences the subseasonal and spatial variability of monsoon over India.
Thatz me at the ARMEX (ARabian sea Monsoon EXperiment) cruise on ORV Sagar Kanya, during Mar-Apr 2003. Instrument in view contains Nansen bottles [for water sampling at different depths], CTD [measures conductivity (salinity), temperature, pressure (depth)], ADCP [current profiler] etc. These are lowered to the deep ocean, collecting data all the way and sending it back to a computer terminal.
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Tags: arabian sea, hokkaido, hokkaido university, monsoon, physical oceanography
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