资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

To predict how monsoons will evolve in the 21st century, we need to understand how they have changed in the past. In paleoclimate literature, the major focus has been on the role of solar forcing on monsoons but not on the amplification by feedbacks internal to the climate system. Here we have used the results from a transient climate simulation to show that feedbacks amplify the effect of change in insolation on the Indian summer monsoon. We show that during the deglacial (22鈥塳a to 10鈥塳a) monsoons were predominantly influenced by rising water vapor due to increasing sea surface temperature, whereas in the Holocene (10鈥塳a to 0鈥塳a) cloud feedback was more important. These results are consistent with another transient simulation, thus increasing confidence despite potential model biases. We have demonstrated that insolation drives monsoon through different pathways during cold and warm periods, thereby highlighting the changing role of internal factors.