Monsoons and the Legacy of Professor Michio Yanai

A part of Professor Yanai's remarkable career in atmospheric sciences, was his fundamental work on heat sources and sinks in the tropical atmosphere. This work allowed, for the first time, a systematic methodology for the identification of the components of the heating and cooling of the atmosphere. This work proved to be of singular importance to the understanding of the onset of the monsoon and the annual cycle of the monsoon. Of particular importance was the identification of the elevated heat source of the Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau complex. It explained, for example, why the South Asian monsoon was unique among all of the monsoon systems on the planet. We summarize Professor Yanai's seminal work on monsoon dynamics and why it has proved to be fundamental in our current understanding of the monsoon.