The characteristic evolution of El Niño Southern Oscillation ( ENSO ) on timescales of months to years means that risks to agriculture have structure between seasons and years. The potential for consecutive ENSO ‐induced yield anomalies is of particular interest in major food producing areas, where modest changes in yield have significant effects on global markets. In this study, we analyse how multi‐year El Niño and La Niña l...

The monthly summer monsoon rainfall over the Homogeneous Indian Monsoon region (HI) that represents most of the variance of all‐India monsoon rainfall is investigated using observational data from 1880 to 2002. Severe droughts in July occur mostly during El Niño events of the boreal summer monsoon season. They occurred frequently in the late 19th to early 20th century, rarely in the middle of the 20th century, and again occasi...

This study quantifies the effects of stressful weather and elevated air pollution levels on cause‐specific mortality in Santiago, Chile, during the austral winters from 1988 to 1996. A temporal synoptic index (TSI) is used to form weather classes and air pollution classes. Prior applications of the TSI have formed classes solely on the basis of weather and may have systematically underestimated the impact of air pollution leve...

We examine the relationship between the state of the equatorial Indian Ocean, ENSO, and the Indian summer monsoon rainfall using data from 1881 to 1998. The zonal wind anomalies and SST anomaly gradient over the equatorial Indian Ocean are used as indices that represent the condition of the Indian Ocean. Although the index defined by the zonal wind anomalies correlates poorly with Indian summer monsoon rainfall, the linear rec...