The NOAA daily outgoing longwave radiation （OLR） and the Global Precipitation Climatology Project （GPCP）daily precipitation data are used to study the variation of dominant convection modes and their relationships over Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the western Pacific Ocean during the summers from 1997 to 2004. Major findings are as follows： （1） Regression analysis with the OLR indicates the convective variations over Asian monsoon region are more closely associated with the convective activities over the western subtropical Pacific （WSP） than with those over the northern tropical Indian Ocean （NTIO）. （2） The EOF analysis of OLR indicates the first mode （EOF1） exhibits the out-of-phase variations between eastern China and India, and between eastern China and the WSP. The OLR EOF1 primarily exhibits seasonal and even longer-term variations. （3） The OLR EOF2 mostly displays in-phase convective variations over India, the Bay of Bengal, and southeastern China. A wavelet analysis reveals intraseasonal variation （ISV） features in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2004. However, the effective ISV does not take place in every year and it seems to occur only when the centers of an east-west oriented dipole reach enough intensity over the tropical Indian and western Pacific Oceans. （4） The spatial patterns of OLR EOF3 are more complicated than those of EOF1 and EOF2, and an effective ISV is noted from 1999 to 2004. The OLR EOF3 implies there is added complexity of the OLR pattern when the effective ISV occurs. （5） The correlation analysis suggests the precipitation over India is more closely associated with the ISV, seasonal variations, and even longer-term variations than precipitation occurring over eastern China.
Summer monsoon in Southeast Asia can cause large-scale precipitation in the region in early summer, which is featured by prevailing low-level southwesterly from the Bay of Bengal to South China Sea （SCS）. It has characteristics of its own as well as those of Asian monsoons in general. As found in studies over recent years on East Asian monsoons, the earliest onset of the Southeast Asian summer monsoon occurs in early summer over the SCS, among all members of the monsoon system. It then advances westward to India and northward to eastern China, Japan and Korean Peninsula. As pointed out by Lau and Yang121, the end of April is the earliest time when the Asian monsoon sets up at the southern tip of Indo-china Peninsula. Being the earliest signal for the whole summer monsoon system in Asia, it may be of some predictive value for the establishment of Asian summer monsoon （ASM）.
