The spectrum of Asian monsoon variability

Abstract:

The Indian monsoon is the critical source of freshwater for over one billion people. Variability in monsoon precipitation occurs on all time scales and has severe consequences for the people who depend on monsoon rains. Extreme precipitation events have increased in the 20th century and are predicted to continue to become more frequent with anthropogenic global warming. The most recent models project that both monsoon precipitation and variability of precipitation will increase over the 21st century leading to increased flooding and possibly severe droughts. Although current models are able to capture the risk of relatively short droughts (1-5 years) reasonably well, they tend to underestimate the risk of longer, decadal- multidecadal droughts. I use observational records over the last 100 years in conjunction with cave, tree ring, and lake data from the NOAA paleoclimate database to reconstruct Holocene monsoon variability. I am able to show that the Asian monsoon has more low frequency variability than is projected by current climate models. The growing evidence for this discrepancy in hydroclimate variability between models and observational/paleoclimate records is of grave concern. If these models fail to capture the decadal-multidecadal droughts of the past it is likely they will underestimate the possibility of such droughts in the future.