|
About | Contact | Mongabay on Facebook | Mongabay on Twitter | Subscribe |
|
|
Droughts in India to worsen with climate change -- study mongabay.com May 12, 2006 Climate change may be weakening India's monsoon, producing droughts and potentially causing significant consequences in the world's most populous region, according to a new study by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. According to the authors, drier climate conditions result from varying rate at which parts of the Indian Ocean are warming -- tempartures in the tropical Indian Ocean are climbing faster than the northern Indian Ocean. "It appears that the whole tropical region in this area is being pulled in different directions," said Ramanathan, director of the Center for Clouds, Chemistry and Climate at Scripps. "The observed trend of reduced sunlight reaching the Earth's surface, with compensating solar heating aloft from the pollution, also called the brown haze,' appears to be masking the greenhouse warming in the northern Indian Ocean, while the greenhouse warming continues unabated in the southern Indian Ocean. We are starting to see that the air pollution affects sunlight and is potentially having a major disruption of the rain patterns, with some regions getting more and some less."
The authors say that similar pollution clouds can be seen in other parts of the world, including the United States. "About five to 10 years ago we used to think about pollution as an urban problem," said Ramanathan. "Now we have discovered, with new observations including satellite data, that these pollution clouds travel quickly and can cover an entire ocean. Scientists have shown that in a matter of five days pollution traveled from China to the United States, and in a matter of three to four days it can travel from the U.S. to Europe." Chung and Ramanathan say that monsoonal rainfall over India has decreased by approximately five to eight percent since the 1950s. This article is based on a news release from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
Tags: impact of climate change climate science climate change water drought earth science africa asia India green News index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing
|
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 
Photos HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS / PRINTS 
CALENDARS 
CANVAS BAGS 
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright mongabay 2010 Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from mongabay.com operations (server, data transfer, travel) are mitigated through an association with Anthrotect, an organization working with Afro-indigenous and Embera communities to protect forests in Colombia's Darien region. Anthrotect is protecting the habitat of mongabay's mascot: the scale-crested pygmy tyrant. |
