Subtheme 18.1: Mega-geo-disasters under the changing climate and stability in Asian monsoon climate.
Session Convener:
Prof. Dr. Toru Terao, Kagawa University, Japan,
Email: terao.toru@kagawa-u.ac.jp
Session Description and Aim
Impacts of global climate change on the Asian monsoon has been a hot topic not only for research community but also for people and policymakers. This is partly because an urgent societal needs for the mitigation of and adaptation to the global warming. In the Asian monsoon region, due to the active geological processes and unique topography, risks for different types of mega-geo-disasters should be assessed. It is expected that the extreme precipitation including droughts will increase in near future. There are several future climate projections and their impacts on the water availability in Asian region. However, the current climate models have inherent difficulty in reproduction of the current spatio-temporal patterns of monsoon precipitation. This is partly due to non-linear land-atmosphere interaction and coupling with convective activities in this complex terrain and terrestrial region. At the same time, stability of the Asian monsoon climate has been a topic in climate science. The Asian summer monsoon has a drastic onset mechanism with a sudden onset of Somali jet and a northward jump of subtropical westerly jet, indicating a regime shift between different climate states. Some researchers pointed out a possibility of the Asian monsoon demise associated with global climate change, under a context of the climate tipping point. In East Asian countries, there is evidence that shows a prevalence of stable climate condition during the Holocene. The role of Asian monsoon on the global or Asian climate stability should be a key topic that have to be solved in the collaboration among geology, glaciology, hydrology, and climatology. We invite all geological and climatological research papers that discuss past, current, and future aspects of Asian monsoon climate.