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So the Indian summer monsoon is a seasonal phenomenon whereby the landsurface of India
warms up faster in summer than the surrounding ocean, especially to the south. This sucks
in moist air from the ocean that then rises and falls out in extreme monsoonal rains.
That of course are essential for the agricultures and the livelihoods of some 700,000 people
on that subcontinent. The concern here is not so much global warming and green house
gases, but the fact that humans have created what is called an atmospheric brown cloud,
a kind of haze in the atmosphere over India. And that this atmospheric brown cloud tends
to scatter sunlight, absorb it in the atmosphere but stop the sunlight reaching the landsurface
and that seems to be disrupting the process of summer heating and creation of the monsoon.
If the atmospheric brown cloud over India continues to build up and disrupt the monsoon-rains
in summer, then the big concern is, that it'll damage production of food, agriculture in
large areas of the subcontinent and obviously many people's health and livelihoods depend
on that. If the monsoon then switches back on stronger as we've seen in recent years,
we could have such severe rainfall events that they themselves count as catastrophes.