A study of tree rings provided on Thursday the most detailed record yet of at least four epic droughts that hit Asia over the past millennium, including one that helped end China’s Ming Dynasty in 1644.
Data collected over the past 15 years for the study is expected to help scientists understand how climate change can unleash large-scale weather disruptions.
Any drastic shifts to the seasonal monsoon rains in Asia, which feed nearly half the world’s population by helping crops grow, could have serious socio-economic consequences, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory said.
They mapped out past droughts and their relative severity by sampling the wood of thousands of ancient trees across Asia. Among them was a drought that caused tens of millions of people to starve to death in the late 1870s.
“Global climate models fail to accurately simulate the Asian monsoon, and these limitations have hampered our ability to plan for future, potentially rapid and heretofore unexpected shifts in a warming world,” said lead author Edward Cook, head of Lamont’s Tree Ring Lab.
Prior to the study, published in yesterday’s edition of Science, reliable instrumental data collected in Asia — such as temperature, rain accumulations and winds — only dated back to 1950.
The scientists pointed to evidence that monsoon changes are driven at least in part by variations in sea-surface temperatures, with some speculation, but no certainty, that warming global temperatures could modify and possibly intensify these cycles.
The tree-ring records suggested that climate may have played an important roll in the fall of China’s Ming Dynasty in 1644, by providing additional evidence of a severe drought already referenced in some historical Chinese texts as the worst in five centuries at the time.
According to the study, the drought occurred at some point between 1638 and 1641, most severely in northeastern China close to Beijing. It is believed to have helped fuel rebellions by farmers that eventually contributed to the Ming Dynasty’s downfall.
Southern China is currently experiencing its worst drought in nearly a century.
Rainfall determines the width of the annual growth rings of some tree species. The researchers’ trek across Asia to find trees old enough for long-term records took them to more than 300 sites, to Siberia, Indonesia, northern Australia, Pakistan and as far east as Japan.
“It’s everything from lowland rainforests to high in the Himalayas,” said study coauthor Kevin Anchukaitis, a Lamont tree ring scientist. “You have a tremendous diversity of environment, climate influences and species.”
University of Hawaii meteorologist Bin Wang said the tree-ring atlas is valuable to monsoon forecasters, allowing them to detect short-term and long-term patterns thanks to the detailed spatial areas and the length of the record.
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
RSS