Interannual Variability

Any phenomena which changes from year to year is said to have interannual variability. Such statements as "its hotter than usual this year", or "we got a lot more rain than usual this year" are both examples of interannual variability. Investigation of interannual variability is nessecary to distinguish long term trends from random fluctuations.

The above graph shows the maximum monthly rainfall for the Indian Ocean over a 63 month period.

Another way to see interannual variability is to animate monthly average data taken from satellites. This is done in another section of this scenario.