Tag Archives: northwest india

Early Warning System Provides Four-Month Forecast of Malaria Epidemics in Northwest India

ANN ARBOR — Sea surface temperatures in the tropical South Atlantic Ocean can be used to accurately forecast, by up to four months, malaria epidemics thousands of miles away in northwestern India, a University of Michigan theoretical ecologist and her colleagues have found.

Colder-than-normal July sea surface temperatures in the tropical South Atlantic are linked to both increased monsoon rainfall and malaria epidemics in the arid and semi-arid regions of northwest India, including the vast Thar desert, according to Mercedes Pascual and her colleagues, who summarize their findings in a paper published online March 3 in the journal Nature Climate Change. (more…)

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Climate Change Led to Collapse of Ancient Indus Civilization, Study Finds

A new study combining the latest archaeological evidence with state-of-the-art geoscience technologies provides evidence that climate change was a key ingredient in the collapse of the great Indus or Harappan Civilization almost 4000 years ago. The study also resolves a long-standing debate over the source and fate of the Sarasvati, the sacred river of Hindu mythology.

Once extending more than 1 million square kilometers across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, over what is now Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan, the Indus civilization was the largest—but least known—of the first great urban cultures that also included Egypt and Mesopotamia. Like their contemporaries, the Harappans, named for one of their largest cities, lived next to rivers owing their livelihoods to the fertility of annually watered lands. (more…)

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