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

Author:

Kathayat Gayatri1ORCID,Sinha Ashish2ORCID,Breitenbach Sebastian F. M.3ORCID,Tan Liangcheng4ORCID,Spötl Christoph5ORCID,Li Hanying1ORCID,Dong Xiyu1ORCID,Zhang Haiwei1ORCID,Ning Youfeng1ORCID,Allan Robert J.6ORCID,Damodaran Vinita7,Edwards R. Lawrence8,Cheng Hai149ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710054, China

2. Department of Earth Science, California State University, Dominguez Hills, Carson, CA 90747

3. Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 1XE, United Kingdom

4. State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an 710061, China

5. Institute of Geology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck 6020, Austria

6. Climate Monitoring and Attribution Group, Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, EX1 3PB, United Kingdom

7. School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, United Kingdom

8. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455

9. Key Laboratory of Karst Dynamics, Ministry of Land and Resources, Institute of Karst Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, 541004 Guilin, China

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 multidecadal intervals of reduced monsoon rainfall, frequently occurred over the past millennium. These extreme events are in striking temporal synchrony with the historically documented droughts, famines, mass mortality events, and geopolitical changes in the Indian subcontinent. Our findings necessitate reconsideration of the region’s current water resources, sustainability, and mitigation policies that discount the possibility of protracted droughts in the future.

Funder

National Natural Science Foundation of China

Presidents' International Fellowship Initiative

Publisher

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Subject

Multidisciplinary

Reference68 articles.

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4. Ministry of Earth Sciences Indian Meteorological Department. https://mausam.imd.gov.in/. Accessed 5 January 2022.

5. Climate and the Global Famine of 1876–78

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