Slow trumps fast in changing the summer monsoon
Monday, December 24, 2012 - 05:30
in Earth & Climate
(Phys.org)—Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory traced the different ways pollution particles change summer monsoon rainfall in South Asia. They found that pollution's effect through "slow" processes, affecting the region over weeks to months, has a more extensive impact on the monsoon than the "fast" processes occurring in a matter of days. Monsoons are an important climatic feature of our planet, and understanding the factors that influence monsoon behavior is a fundamental challenge for climate science. Their work was published in the Geophysical Research Letters.