"The monsoon itself [which roughly runs from May to October] is highly complex, and pollution is highly complex. With that combination, we need a lot more observations and modelling to say exactly what will happen," Mark Lawrence, a participant in the workshop and scientific director at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Germany, told SciDev.Net in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Rapid industrial development and population growth in Asia have led to increased emissions of a range of pollutants, including gases such as carbon monoxide, and aerosols such as black carbon and other dust particles. These emissions are pumped through monsoon systems that act as chimneys into higher levels of the atmosphere, where they form an 'anticyclone' — a large circulation of winds moving away from a central eye — over the Tibetan plateau.
“Monsoons and pollution are highly complex. With that combination, we need a lot more observations to say what will happen” Mark Lawrence Some of the emissions travel even higher, into the atmospheric layer known as the stratosphere, staying for a long time and affecting radiation and climate, says Laura Pan, atmospheric scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, a co-organiser of the workshop.
Increased particle emissions during or before the Asian summer monsoon are also expected to affect cloud and rainfall patterns. Smoke or dust in the air act as 'seeds' on which water drops form to make clouds, says ICIMOD's lead atmospheric scientist, Arnico Panday. The more particles in the atmosphere, the more water vapour spreads out and the longer it takes to rain — the same way mist on a shower curtain only drips down when large enough droplets form...
Monsoon in Mumbai, shot by Jaxer, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
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