Protracted Indian monsoon droughts of the past millennium and their societal impacts.

ABSTRACT: Protracted droughts lasting years to decades constitute severe threats to human welfare across the Indian subcontinent. Such events are, however, rare during the instrumental period (ca. since 1871 CE). In contrast, the historic documentary evidence indicates the repeated occurrences of protracted droughts in the region during the preinstrumental period implying that either the instrumental observations underestimate the full spectrum of monsoon variability or the historic accounts overestimate the severity and duration of the past droughts. Here we present a temporally precise speleothem-based oxygen isotope reconstruction of the Indian summer monsoon precipitation variability from Mawmluh cave located in northeast India. Our data reveal that protracted droughts, embedded within mu

SUBMITTER: Kathayat G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9522357 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature