Climate change blamed for India’s monsoon misery
Erratic rains and water mismanagement cause death and destruction.
Monsoon rains in Asia are behaving ever more strangely, often with catastrophic effects, an Indian official has told climate experts at the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) meeting in Beijing.
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Comments
While I agree that more data is needed before pinning the erratic monsoons on Climate Change, it is very clear that unplanned expansion of cities and suburbs, i.e., human activities are to be blamed for most floods in south India where I live.
Posted by: Anupama | November 15, 2006 01:42 PM
It is clearly very difficult to persuade many countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emmissions. It might be easier to persuade them to contribute to a carbon dioxide removal option. A very significant carbon reduction could be achieved by cultivating algal farms in desert areas. The product could be harvested and used for animal feed.The water required could be produced by desalination.
Posted by: Prof Brian Rabin | November 16, 2006 11:02 AM
The key issues in the analysis and prediction of monsoon trends in India, are:
1)Poor qulaity of data and data analysis
2)Low quality of scientific efforts
Therefore, inorder to better understand the monsoon patterns and thus, predict future trends, both of the aforesaid issues must be very carefully and meticulously taken care of. Indeed, a good quality of analysis and prediction will not only help save millions of people of the region from floods(and draughts) but also provide important constraints for modeling the climate of the region and the world as well. This is absolutely imperative in view of the spurt in scientific efforts, globally, to model climate.
Posted by: Arindam Samanta | November 20, 2006 05:45 PM
As posted by arindam, data issues are a key to monitoring diurnal changes in precipitation during the monsoon season. A sufficient effort is made in validating the measurements from TRMM and IRS satellites. Inter-callibration among sensors, information content retrieved from sensors and uncertainties in observed parameters are a key in resolving inter-sensor comparisons of precipitation patterns. As per human activities, it is essential to develop a robust model that will highlight the causality between human activities and precipitation behavior. Human activities here generally refer to grazing, increased carbon emissions, herbivory, agriculture, and other direct effects that alter the existing energy regime that governs the net energy exchange between atmosphere, ocean and land. An indirect measure of precipitation would be to quantify the net evapo-transpiration from land surface which in turn is also related to the type of vegetation and soil moisture retentivity. Direct field measurements (flux towers) would enable us to better quantify these parameters. The radiative equilibrium is the basis behind the changing patterns of monsoon. Precisely quantifying the net longwave flux that is emitted from the surface is absolutely necessary as this is an important parameter in driving climate models that predict rainfall trends over the next 100 years with respect to different Carbon emission rates (one of the many human impacts). The significance of the causality model will be an essential step in understanding the patterns behind monsoon variability. The model can be as simple as correlating total dry/ wet season rainfall, total ET, soil moisture, net radiation and human factors like CO2 emissions and forest fires (very essential in tropical regions). The discussion can carry us a long way, but the crux is to develop an almost perfect model that inputs parameters which can be properly quantified. It is not a difficult task, it needs a proper methodology and simulataneous validation efforts from different scientific research groups.
Posted by: sangram ganguly | February 2, 2007 01:07 AM