Towards developing an operational Indian ocean dipole warning system for Southeast Asia

Two strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) events in 2019 and 2023 led to multiple disasters over Southeast Asia, highlighting the need for warnings of IOD events. This paper presents a stock-take of the current criteria for IOD monitoring and prediction and describes the development of an IOD warning system for Southeast Asia. We examined how subjective choices such as observational datasets, baseline periods, and time averaging affect IOD event identification. Our findings indicate that 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 and prediction of IOD events, and hence between various centers on IOD state. The southern Maritime Continent can experience the impact of the IOD on rainfall even when the IOD has not met the current operational criterion, suggesting a need for an impact-based threshold for the IOD. We assess the skill of models in capturing the strength and phase of the IOD and report errors in IOD predictions. While most models are skillful in capturing the active phase of the IOD, many models have an overactive IOD strength. Calibration of DMI-based monitoring products is therefore recommended for the most skilful IOD predictions. Finally, we describe an objective standard operating procedure to assist climate forecasters in issuing timely alerts of IOD events.