University of Bremen

Palaeoclimatic records help us to better understand the internal feedback processes within the climate system which are believed to influence the monsoon circulation more severely than external factors such as the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This graphic is from the Nature paper and shows the basic components of a summer monsoon and its driving forces. Summer solar radiation heats the surface. A land–ocean thermal contrast, resulting from a lower surface heat capacity of the land compared to the ocean, causes the low-level inflow of moist air from ocean to land during summer and the rising of air over the landmass. Courtesy: authors and Nature.

May 11, 2016

Past Monsoons Hold Key To Current Changes

A new Nature paper discusses the main influences on monsoon variability and their uncertainties, and argues that a coordinated effort to quantify what happened in the…