“Monsoon rainfall is vital for thousands and thousands of farmers in India and thus for feeding the people in the world’s second-most populous country,” lead author Schewe says. “So possible changes of precipitation patterns can have important implications for long-term adaptation planning of the Indian economy.”
In an analysis based on a computer simulation, the researchers found that increasing temperatures and changes in the strength of the Pacific Walker circulation in spring could cause more frequent failure of the monsoon rainfall towards the end of the 21st and into the 22nd century. They assumed a temperature rise of approximately 4.5°C above preindustrial levels until 2200.
While average monsoon rainfall has been relatively stable during the past century, rising trends have been observed in the number of extreme rain events. “From a risk assessment perspective, our modeling results combined with observation data suggest that Indian monsoon changes are something we urgently need to investigate further,” second author Levermann says. “We need additional studies to confirm whether the monsoon changes found in our study are robust across a number of different climate models.”
Article: A statistically predictive model for future monsoon failure in India. Jacob Schewe and Anders Levermann 2012. Environ. Res. Lett. 7 044023 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044023
Weblink to the article: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044023/article
