Monsoons are of immense importance to mankind. Roughly half of the earth's population lives in the monsoon zone, including sub-Saharan Africa and the world's two most populated countries, China and India. These regions' economies are largely dependent on agriculture, therefore monsoon rains are crucial for both their present and future means of existence.
In the past, the monsoon system was subject to extreme variations in both intensity and geographical position. For example, recent studies revealed a rapid northward shift of the monsoonal rainfall fronts some 10,000 years ago. During the early-Holocene paleomonsoon influence reached some 700 km further north than today subjecting large parts of Northeastern Africa to essentially different environments. As a result, the present-day unpopulated deserts of the Old World dryland belt supported grass and tree vegetation. Due to anthropogenic impact, such dramatic changes could occur even more quickly in the future.
Earlier climatic and environmental changes, stored in geological archives, probably still provide the most reliable scenarios of possible future climatic development in the tropics and subtropics. A better understanding of past monsoon variations is therefore imperative. On this background, INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research) and PAGES (Past Global Changes, a core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme) initiated the Paleomonsoons Project in order to coordinate and contribute to paleomonsoon research. An international project office was set up at the Department of Geosciences, Free University of Berlin.
Some of the project's objectives include: the intensification of international and interdisciplinary collaboration through a better exchange of relevant data from terrestrial, marine and atmospheric paleoclimatic research; the organisation of workshops to this aim; the coordination of joint publications; public relations; and support of applications for funding of paleomonsoon-related research.
Annual workshops attempt to advance the interpretation and critical assessment of high-resolution climate-proxy records on paleomonsoon variations during the last 140,000 years and to provide paleo-analogues for prognostic efforts.
The forthcoming meeting, a joint conference with the CLIP project (UNESCO Climates of the Past) in Paraguana / Venezuela, 1 - 8 July 1996, will focus on past monsoon variations in Central America. The following workshop will be held in Africa in early 1997 with the support of MEDIAS-FRANCE.
| Contact : Stefan Krpelin, Coordinator Paleomonsoons Project Office, Free University of Berlin, Podbielskiallee 62, D-14195 Berlin, Germany. Phone: +49 30 838-6368 - Fax: +49 30 841-00363 - E-mail: [email protected] |