EGU24-4822, updated on 08 Mar 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-4822
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Climate change is not the primary cause of extreme monsoons in Pakistan

Moetasim Ashfaq1, Nathaniel Johnson2, Fred Kucharski3, Noah Diffenbaugh4, Adnan Abid5, and Katherine Evans1
Moetasim Ashfaq et al.
  • 1Oak Ridge National Laboratory , Knoxville, United States of America (mashfaq@ornl.gov)
  • 2National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, United States of America
  • 3The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Italy
  • 4Stanford University, United States of America
  • 5Oxford University, United Kingdom

Monsoons have been frequently severe in Pakistan in the last few decades, leading to extreme droughts and floods of unprecedented proportions. The wide belief is that these changing precipitation patterns are mainly due to climate change. However, considering this region's long history of floods and droughts, it is unwise to rule out the role of natural climate variability without a careful diagnosis. This study examines the contribution of oceanic and atmospheric variability to unusual precipitation distributions in Pakistan. We find that variations in sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific and northern Arabian Sea and internal atmospheric variability related to the circumglobal teleconnection pattern and the subtropical westerly jet stream account for 74% of monthly summer precipitation variability in the 21st century. Several of these forcings have co-occurred with record strength during episodes of extreme monsoons, compounding the overall effect. Climate change may have contributed to increased variability and the in-phase co-occurrences of the identified mechanisms, but further research is required to confirm any such connection.

How to cite: Ashfaq, M., Johnson, N., Kucharski, F., Diffenbaugh, N., Abid, A., and Evans, K.: Climate change is not the primary cause of extreme monsoons in Pakistan, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-4822, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-4822, 2024.

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