Droughts Sync Up as the Climate Changes

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By Rebecca Owen, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: A new study reconstructs roughly 800 years of streamflow history in India’s major rivers, showing an increase in synchronous drought linked to anthropogenic climate change. ...Recent observations and modeling suggest that on the Indian subcontinent, where major rivers support more than 2 billion people, the likelihood of synchronous drought is increasing as summer monsoons weaken, the Indian Ocean warms, and anthropogenic emissions and excessive groundwater pumping continue. However, little is known about the long-term patterns of synchronous drought in India, in part because streamflow data don’t offer information about the distant past. By combining several decades of streamflow measurements from 45 gauge stations along India’s major rivers with high-resolution temperature and precipitation data and data from a range of paleoclimate proxies, Chuphal and Mishra have now reconstructed streamflow records across more than 800 years.... 

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