Mar. 20, 2013 Natural swings in the climate have significantly
intensified Northern Hemisphere monsoon rainfall, showing that
these swings must be taken into account for climate predictions
in the coming decades, a new study finds. The findings are
published in the March 18 online publication of the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences. Monsoon rainfall in the
Northern Hemisphere impacts about 60% of the World population in
Southeast Asia, West Africa and North America. Given the
possible impacts of global warming, solid predictions of monsoon
rainfall for the next decades are important for infrastructure
planning and sustainable economic development. Such predictions,
however, are very complex because they require not only pinning
down how humanmade greenhouse gas emissions will impact the
monsoons and monsoon rainfall, but also a knowledge of natural
long-term climate swings, about which little is known so far. To
tackle this problem an international team of scientists around
Meteorology Professo