Abstract
The South Asian Monsoon system is one of the most important and influential of the Earth’s major climate systems. The people of the most heavily populated Asian countries have adapted many aspects of their society to the subtleties of the monsoon rains, and are thus highly susceptible to small changes in the timing and intensity of monsoon precipitation. A monsoon failure can have disastrous effects, and flooding related to extreme monsoon rains has proven to be one of the most deadly of natural catastrophes (e.g. in Bangladesh, China, India and Nepal). These vulnerabilities are likely to increase in the future with continued population growth, intensified land-use and sea-level rise. Although there is a growing effort to improve seasonal to interannual monsoon prediction skills via new research, the largest threats to human health and livelihood could come from unanticipated decade- and longer-scale extremes in monsoon. A major goal of this paper is to summarize the state-of-the-art regarding century to millennium-scales of monsoon variability, and to identify the paleoenvironmental research that is most urgently needed in the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau if society is to be served effectively in the 21st century.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Anderson, D. M., Overpeck, J. T., and Gupta, A. K. (2002). Increase in the Asian Southwest Monsoon during the past four centuries. Science 297, 596–599.
Black, D., Peterson, L., Overpeck, J., Kaplan, A., Evans, M., and Kashgarian, M. (1999). Eight centuries of North Atlantic Ocean atmosphere variability. Science 286, 1709–1713.
Bond, G., Kromer, B., Beer, J., Muscheler, R., Evans, M. N., Showers, W., Hoffmann, S., Lotti-Bond, R., Hajdas, I., and Bonani, G. (2001). Persistent solar influence on north Atlantic climate during the Holocene. Science 294, 2130–2136.
Claussen, M., Kubatzki, C., Brovkin, V., and Ganopolski, A. (1999). Simulation of an abrupt change in Saharan vegetation in the mid-Holocene. Geophysical Research Letters 26, 2037–2040.
CLIMAS (2002). http://www.ispe.arizona.edu/climas/index.html
COHMAP (1988). Climatic changes of the last 18,000 years: Observations and model simulations. Science 241, 1043–1052.
Dyurgerov, M. B., and Meier, M. F. (2000). Twentieth century climate change: Evidence from small glaciers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97, 1406–1411.
Gasse, F., and van Campo, E. (1994). Abrupt postglacial climate events in West Asia and North-Africa Monsoon domains. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 126, 435–456.
Gupta, A. K., Anderson, D., and Overpeck, J. (2003). Abrupt changes in the Holocene Asian Southwest Monsoon and their links to the North Atlantic Ocean. Nature 421, 354–357.
IPCC (2001). Climate change 2001: The scientific basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In J. T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D. J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P. J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell, and C. A. Johnson (Eds.), pp. 881. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Kutzbach, J. E., and Street-Perrott, F. A. (1985). Milankovitch forcing of fluctuations in the level of tropical lakes from 18 to zero kyr BP. Nature 317, 130–134.
Montoya, M., von Storch, H., and Crowley, T. J. (2000). Climate simulation for 125 kyr BP with a coupled ocean- atmosphere general circulation model. Journal of Climate 13, 1057–1072.
Morrill, C., Overpeck, J. T., and Cole, J. E. (2003). A synthesis of abrupt changes in the Asian summer monsoon since the last deglaciation. The Holocene 13, 465–476.
Overpeck, J., Anderson, D., Trumbore, S., and Prell, W. (1996). The southwest Indian Monsoon over the last 18000 years. Climate Dynamics 12, 213–225.
Overpeck, J., Hughen K., Hardy, D., Bradley, R., Case, R., Douglas, M., Finney, B., Gajewski, K., Jacoby G., Jennings A., Lamoreux, S., Lasca, A., MacDonald, G., Moore, J., Retelle, M., Smith, S., Wolfe, A., and Zielinski, G. (1997). Arctic environmental change of the last four centuries. Science 278, 1251–1256.
Overpeck, J., Whitlock, C., and Huntley, B. (2002). “Terrestrial biosphere dynamics in the climate system: Past and future.” In Paleoclimate, global change and the future. (K. Alverson, R. Bradley, and T. Pedersen, Eds.), pp. 81–111. Springer, Berlin.
Thompson, L. G., Yao, T., Mosley-Thompson, E., Davis, M. E., Henderson, K. A., and Lin, P. N. (2000). A high-resolution millennial record of the South Asian Monsoon from Himalayan ice cores. Science 289, 1916–1919.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Overpeck, J. et al. (2005). Holocene Environmental Change in the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau Region: Lake Sediments and the Future. In: Huber, U.M., Bugmann, H.K.M., Reasoner, M.A. (eds) Global Change and Mountain Regions. Advances in Global Change Research, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3508-X_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3508-X_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-3507-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-3508-1
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)