{"id":14974,"date":"2016-09-26T05:52:27","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T09:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=14974"},"modified":"2016-09-26T05:52:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T09:52:27","slug":"giant-see-saw-of-monsoon-rains-detected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/giant-see-saw-of-monsoon-rains-detected\/","title":{"rendered":"Giant see-saw of monsoon rains detected"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo by Vijay S Paul<\/p><\/div>\n

Press release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research<\/p>\n

26\/09\/2016<\/p>\n

When the summer rains in China are weak, they are strong in Australia, and vice versa \u2013 scientists have discovered a previously unknown see-saw relationship between these two monsoon regions. This effect does not occur from one year to another, but on decadal and centennial time scales. To detect the pattern, the team developed a novel mathematical method to analyze traces of climatic events of the past 9000 years archived in ancient dripstones from caves. The regional monsoon has huge effects on agriculture and hence on the livelihoods of half of the world\u2019s population, including India and Indonesia. Understanding how seasonal periods of rainfall in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of our planet are linked is important for assessing possible long-distance effects of climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been surprised by how clearly the ups and downs of precipitation in East Asia on the one hand and Australia on the other hand are opposed, it\u2019s really a giant see-saw,\u201d says Deniz Eroglu from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and University of S\u00e3o Paulo, lead author of the study to be published in Nature Communications. \u201cWe needed to cut through the data clutter to detect this pattern. While our method of sophisticated statistical time series data analysis might seem quite complicated, our findings have substantial real-world consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data from caves in China and Australia \u2013 these countries are most affected<\/p>\n

Australia, just like China, heavily depends on the monsoon summer rains. \u201cBoth countries have experienced drier and wetter periods in the past. For instance the Northwest of Australia\u2019s tourism and agriculture industries are vulnerable to flooding and bush fires, so any change from the current precipitation pattern will have huge impacts for the people living here,\u201d says co-author Thomas Stemler from the University of Western Australia. \u201cHowever, this is an issue way beyond the region \u2013 in fact, the East-Asian-Indonesian-Australian summer monsoon provides a heat source that drives global circulation of airstreams during what is the winter season in the US, Russia and Europe. It will be exciting to investigate how the see-saw we found may be affecting these far-away parts of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since there are no direct records of monsoon dynamics over past millennia, the scientists need to work with indirect data evidence. \u201cDripstones in ancient caves are amazing witnesses of the Earth\u2019s past. Since they\u2019re growing just fractions of a millimeter per year, we can see changes in the chemical composition over time from one layer to another,\u201d says co-author Norbert Marwan from PIK who himself explored various caves, for instance in India. For the new study, the team used data from Dongge Cave in Southern China and cave KNI-51 in Northwestern Australia. \u201cThough it might seem challenging to climb into the caves to access the dripstones,\u201d says Marwan, \u201cthe real challenge is to decrypt the information they carry \u2013 analyzing thousands of isotope samples and attributing them to specific climatic conditions. For this, we need sophisticated statistics.\u201d A key partner in this process has been the Institute for Geology, Mineralogy & Geophysics at Ruhr-Universit\u00e4t Bochum.<\/p>\n

Mechanics of the heavens are a driver, but human-made warming can change the dynamics<\/p>\n

\u201cThe monsoon see-saw is likely driven by factors humans cannot influence, including the tilt of our Earth\u2019s axis and solar activity, so that\u2019s celestial mechanics,\u201d says co-author J\u00fcrgen Kurths, co-chair of PIK\u2019s research domain Transdisciplinary Concepts and Methods. \u201cHowever, disturbing circulation and precipitation patterns is something we unfortunately can do and already are doing by emitting greenhouse gases and thereby warming our planet. Understanding the natural East-Asian-Australian monsoon variability will help us to better understand certain human-caused climate risks in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article: Deniz Eroglu, Fiona H. McRobie, Ibrahim Ozken, Thomas Stemler, Karl-Heinz Wyrwoll, Sebastian F. M. Breitenbach, Norbert Marwan, J\u00fcrgen Kurths (2016): See-saw relationship of the Holocene East Asian-Australian summer monsoon. Nature Communications [10.1038\/NCOMMS12929]<\/p>\n

Weblink to the article once it is published: http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1038\/NCOMMS12929<\/p>\n

For further information please contact:
\nPIK press office
\nPhone: +49 331 288 25 07
\nE-Mail: press@pik-potsdam.de
\nTwitter: @PIK_Climate
\nwww.pik-potsdam.de<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Press release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 26\/09\/2016 When the summer rains in China are weak, they are strong in Australia, and vice versa \u2013 scientists have discovered a previously unknown...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14976,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14974\/revisions\/14976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}