What are the factors affecting monsoon?
Ali Abdullah Hi There, ang Yongjin from Nanjing Normal University and colleagues published their study in Nature last week (28 February). They took samples of stalagmites — known as speleothems — from the Sanbao Cave in eastern central China and analysed their oxygen isotope ratios, which are linked to rainfall and provide a record of the climate at the time. Adding these data to their previous work has enabled the research team to compile a 224,000-year record of the Asian monsoon’s variability. According to the study, the monsoon responds primarily to changes in summer solar radiation in the Northern Hemisphere. “The synchronous relation between monsoon and the summer solar radiation means that we can predict weather through astronomical orbits in the future,” says Wang. Until now, the best high-resolution records of climate variability from the Northern Hemisphere go back only to the last interglacial period, less than 125,000 years ago. “We are able to date [the samples] precisely
