Flipping of temperature and precipitation trends over the Indian subcontinent due to diametrically opposing influence of GHGs and aerosols

Abstract

Despite significant development in the Earth system models (ESMs) and releases of several coupled model intercomparison projects (CMIPs), the evolving patterns of Indian summer monsoon rainfall and its future trajectory is still uncertain, with low confidence in its direction. This could be because of differential impacts from increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) and aerosol concentrations. We found that the observed pre-2000 (1951–2000) declining monsoon was likely attributed to the increasing aerosol concentrations. On the contrary, the reported revival of post-2000 monsoon rainfall is due to GHG dominance. These are spatiotemporally consistent with individual CMIP Phase 6 (CMIP6) ESM simulations with GHG and aerosols separately. Similar results were obtained for temperature in India, which showed no to low warming signal in pre-2000 due to aerosol-driven cooling. The dominance of GHG impacts has increased India’s warming trend in post-2000. This research highlights a notable trend in temperature and precipitation across the Indian subcontinent during the past two decades, emphasizing the dynamic character of climate change explained by contrasting anthropogenic influences, including GHGs and aerosols.