New Delhi, August 11, 2021 (PPI-OT):With the latest IPCC report warning about increase in monsoon precipitation extremities, scientists have pointed at increasing instances of drought across India and South Asia. The drought phenomenon has been linked with rising temperatures towards the second half of the 21st century leading to increased variations in monsoon precipitation, scientists said, based on the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Sixth Assessment Report of the Working Group I (AR6WGI) titled “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science” released on Monday.
For the first time, it has a dedicated chapter on water cycles. The chapter deals in great detail on monsoon, not just as witnessed in India and South, South-East Asia but across five other monsoonal regions around the globe: North American Monsoon, West African Monsoon, East Asian Monsoon, South American Monsoon and Australian and Maritime Continent Monsoon. “With the increasing variability in precipitation, there would be spells of heavy rainfall followed by dry spells.
Temperatures will be warmer, and this will lead to an increased evapo-transmission demand,” said Executive Director at the Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR) of Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, Raghavan Krishnan. He is one of the Coordinating Lead Authors of the chapter on ‘Water Cycle Changes’ in the AR6WGI report.
“So, even when there would be lot of precipitation and increased soil moisture, the increase in temperature will lead to increased evapo-transmission and lead to very large soil moisture fluctuations,” Krishnan told the media during a virtual interaction. The IITM Earth System Model (IITM-ESM) climate projections (CMIP6) were included in the IPCC AR6WG1 report, a first from India.
The IITM scientists also said that the AR6WG1 team from India comprised one coordinating lead author (CLA), six lead authors (LAs), two Review Editors (REs), one Chapter Scientist (CS) and 10 Contributing Authors. Lead Authors from the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) provided valuable contributions in the assessment of future global climate (Chapter 4), water cycle changes, including regional monsoons (Chapter 8) and the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM).
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