New Delhi: Future climate change will cause an uneven shifting of the tropical rain belt — a narrow band of heavy precipitation near the Earth’s equator — leading to increased flooding in parts of India, a new study warns.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, examined computer simulations from 27 state-of-the-art climate models, and measured the tropical rain belt’s response to a future scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise through the end of the current century.
According to the research, a northward shift of the tropical rain belt over the eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean could result in “intensified flooding in southern India,” and may impact global biodiversity and food security by 2100.
The scientists, including those from the University of California (UC) Irvine in the US, said this “sweeping shift” of the rain belt was disguised in previous studies that provided a global average of the influence of climate…