As I report today in The Times, the South Asian monsoon is
critical to sustaining plants, animals and 1.6 billion people on
the subcontinent. When it brings too little rain between June
and October, shortages of food and drinking water can develop.
When its bounty is too great, floods can displace millions and
cause hundreds of deaths. Scientists who have devoted their
careers to studying the monsoon and predicting its dimensions
say that the prognostications can be incredibly difficult.
Adding to the complexity is global warming, which could
potentially cause monsoon patterns to change. But in a recent
paper in Nature Climate Change, researchers write that they are
beginning to understand more about the systems driving the
monsoon and that they hope to improve their projections in years
to come. We discussed the challenges recently with Andrew
Turner, a researcher in the Department of Meteorology at the
University of Reading in England who was a co-author of the
article with H. Annamalai. Following are excer