Half-precessional dynamics of monsoon rainfall in East Africa

  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home/climate/public_html/sites/default/themes/blogbuzz/node-blog.tpl.php on line 20.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home/climate/public_html/sites/default/themes/blogbuzz/node-blog.tpl.php on line 20.
03 Dec Posted by climatechange in Monsoon

A recent reaserch article in the journal Nature show that monsoon rainfall in East Africa varied at half-precessional (~11,500-year) intervals, because the southeasterly and northeasterly Indian Ocean monsoons, which together create the bimodal seasonal distribution of equatorial rainfall, were strengthened in alternation when the inter-hemispheric insolation gradient was maximized. Dry conditions prevailed when neither monsoon was particularly strong, and minima in local March or September insolation weakened the rain season that followed.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/nature08520.html