How the Arctic has wielded influence on India’s monsoon for at least 1,000 years
A climate reconstruction study has found links between warm or cold conditions in the Arctic and rainfall over the Indian subcontinent.

Warm and cold climatic spells in the Arctic, over the past 1,000 years, imprinted on India’s monsoon fluctuations during that period, a climate reconstruction study finds.
Warm Arctic conditions were linked to intense rainfall over the Indian subcontinent while cold conditions in the Arctic were associated with weak spells of rain over the Indian subcontinent over the past 1,000 years, said scientists at India’s National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research.
In collaboration with Norwegian counterparts, they reconstructed the past climate history from the Arctic region that’s warming faster than any other place on the planet. The scientists said the Arctic’s influence on the short-term changes in the Indian monsoon may become more pronounced as the region experiences further warming due to human actions.
“Large Arctic variabilities (greater than one standard deviation over the past 1000 years) served as a dominant control on Indian monsoon fluctuations during that period.”
“We can anticipate that the monsoon will intensify alongside further Arctic warming, and the difference in precipitation between intense and weak monsoon years will also likely change,” Vikash Kumar from the Past Climate and Ocean Studies division at National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research told Mongabay-India.
Faced with the brevity of instrumental weather records from the Arctic (60-100 years), Kumar and...