Monsoon Rainfall In India To Become More Variable With Climate Change

Scientists have predicted that day-to-day rainfall in India might become much more variable during the monsoon season due to climate change.

AsianScientist (Jun. 21, 2013) – Scientists working with state-of-the-art computer simulations have predicted that day-to-day rainfall in India might become much more variable during the monsoon season due to climate change. This may potentially put millions of poor farmers and the country’s agricultural productivity at risk.

According to the scientists, the Indian monsoon is a complex system which is likely to change under future global warming. About 80 percent of annual rainfall in India occurs during the monsoon season from June through September.

In their study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists used a comprehensive set of 20 different state-of-the-art climate models to predict what might happen under various climate change scenarios. All the models now consistently predict an increase in the daily variability of rainfall during the Indian monsoon.

“Increased variability – this rather technical term translates into potentially severe impacts on people who cannot afford additional loss,” said Anders Levermann, one of the study’s authors.

“Focusing on the average is not always useful. If rainfall comes in a spell and is followed by a drought, this can be devastating even if the average is normal. This requires the right kind of adaptation measures that account for this variability – such as intelligent insurance schemes, for example.”

In their simulations, the scientists found that if greenhouse gases continue to be emitted at the present rate, the daily rainfall variability would change by 13 to 50 percent, the largest change predicted by their climate models.

Even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, the internationally acknowledged threshold, the increase would still result in an additional day-to-day variability of between 8 and 24 percent compared to pre-industrial levels.

“So limiting global warming is key to reduce day-to-day monsoon variability, adaptation cannot replace but rather complement it,” said Levermann.

The article can be found at: Menon et al. (2013) Enhanced Future Variability During India’s Rainy Season.

——

Source: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Photo: Shreyans Bhansali/Flickr.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

Yew Chung is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore.

Related Stories from Asian Scientist