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South Asian monsoon

Tug of war on rainfall changes

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 20–22 (2016)Cite this article

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Precipitation associated with the South Asian summer monsoon has decreased by approximately 7% since 1950, but the reasons for this are unclear. Now research suggests that changes in land-cover patterns and increased emissions from human activities have contributed to this weakening, which is expected to continue in the coming decades.

The onset of the South Asian monsoon in early June brings with it a burst of life across the region — children playing on the streets, blossoming flora, flowing rivers, and sowing of agricultural lands. The monsoon supplies ∼80% of South Asia's annual rainfall, supporting the region's primarily rain-fed agriculture and recharging rivers, aquifers and reservoirs that provide water to over one-fifth of the global population. Since the 1950s, the monsoon has weakened1 and become more erratic, with increased occurrence of extreme rainfall events2. This has led to crop failures and water shortages with severe socio-economic and humanitarian impacts across South Asia. Writing in Climate Dynamics, R. Krishnan and colleagues3 suggest that anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, aerosol emissions and agricultural land-cover changes are responsible for the observed changes in rainfall patterns. They predict that the monsoon weakening will continue through the twenty-first century, threatening the livelihoods and resources of over 1.6 billion people in the region.

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Figure 1: Different anthropogenic factors have competing influences on the South Asian monsoon.

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  1. Deepti Singh is at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, PO Box 1000, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, New York 10964, USA,

    Deepti Singh

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Correspondence to Deepti Singh.

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Singh, D. Tug of war on rainfall changes. Nature Clim Change 6, 20–22 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2901

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