科研之友
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<正>Instrumental observations from many tropical and monsoonal regions, particularly from some of the most densely populated locations in Indo-Pacific and the maritime continent, are revealing a rather worrisome trend. Tropical rainfall appears to be declining since the middle of the 20th century (Fig. 1). Identifying the primary drivers of this drying trend is crucial to assess whether it stems from anthropogenic forcing and thus, expected to continue or merely a manifestation of multi-decadal or longer-term natural climate variability. Writing in Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, Tan et al.[1]show that the decades-long drying trend in the north central IndoPacific (NCIP) region is not unique in the context of the region’s hydroclimate variability during the last two to three millennia;and in fact, the study indicates that NCIP was struck by previous episodes of drier condition, rivaling that of the current drying trend. This study further underscores the classic detection and attribution problem faced by climate scientists today in parsing the relative influence of anthropogenic forced changes in rainfall from natural variability [2].
