A coalition of scientists working on future climate models has found compelling evidence that a rapid shift in the global climate could have a devastating affect on global agriculture production a lot sooner than most had anticipated. Researchers from Oregon State University, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Desert Research Institute in Nevada have studied the oxygen isotopes in the air from ice cores, as well as ancient stalagmites located in Chinese caves to determine that when the Earth’s climate changes rapidly, monsoons start to deliver more rain over the ocean, and does not make it to land, causing a generally drier climate in the world’s tropical region.
As the tropical area of the globe becomes drier, wildfires will become more abundant. With less water and smaller areas for farming, areas like Southern Asia and North Africa will become harder to farm, leading to food shortages in many parts of the world. Some scientists believe that a switch that would lead to the disruption of monsoon’s making landfall could happen within a decade of the climate abnormality’s initiation.
The research for these conclusions was done by measuring the oxygen content in air bubbles found in ice cores from Antarctica to Greenland for the last 100,000 years. These levels were matched with the stalagmite contents from caves in China whose perfectly preserved stalagmites give clues to the rain fall patterns over the same period of time.
The most salient conclusion from this piece of research is that climate change and monsoons are closely related, and without immediate abatement of climate change, the world’s most populous region, as well as its most prodigious agriculture producer, is in danger of facing a perfect storm of devastation.
