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Climate change appears to be increasing the risk of monsoon flooding on the Indian subcontinent.
The monsoon is the great life-giver and the great destroyer of the subcontinent. Without rain from these annual storms, crops wither, animals die and more than half the world's population suffers from potential famine. With too much rain, crops are inundated, animals drown and people suffer from floods and the diseases that follow in their wake. Observations of this critical climate system stretch back decades, and the overall level of rainfall has changed little over the years. But now researchers have discovered a trend within the annual measurements toward fewer, more extreme downpours--a trend that bodes ill for flooding and other natural disasters.
B. N. Goswami of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and his colleagues studied rain gauge data from 1,803 stations scattered throughout central India from 1951 to 2000. As expected there was a wide range of rainfall: from a maximum downpour of 58.2 centimeters in one day (nearly 23 inches) to none, with an average of just 5.7 millimeters (just under one quarter of an inch) a day during the season.
