http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Monsoon/printall.php

<At first, Joaquim Goés' prediction sounds a little like the kind of
folklore you might find in a farmer's almanac: low-snow winters across
Europe and Asia will be followed by summers during which the amount of fish
food in the Arabian Sea will skyrocket.

Such a connection seems hard to believe; after all, thousands of miles and
half a year separate the areas and the events. But in 2004, Goés, an
oceanographer and remote-sensing expert from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean
Sciences in West Boothbay Harbor, Maine, and some of his colleagues put
together a trail of evidence that they say leaves little doubt that the
long-distance connection is real.

Anyone interested in understanding how global warming will matter on a
regional level should be interested in the connection says Goés.
Interested.and probably a little concerned.>

<Goés is also concerned about the impact of an intensifying monsoon on
regional rainfall. "This past summer," said Goés, whose family is originally
from the state of Goa in southwestern India, "the city of Mumbai, on India's
western coast, experienced its worst flood disaster on record." At least a
thousand people died, and much of the city was underwater for days. "We
speculate that the runaway decline in Eurasian snow cover since 1997 may be
strengthening Southwest monsoon rainfall in regions where the rains are
strongly tied to the Arabian Sea winds, such as along the western coast of
India," said Goés. This could mean more intense rain and more frequent
floods in Southwest Asia.>




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