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THe article about the plane crash was very depressing, because all the people on the plane died, but it makes me feel better knowingthat people care about these people who died.

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The article about the plane crash was tragic since there were seven crew members and 155 passengers on the plane. The plane went down on its way to Singapore.

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The article about the climate and earth in Monsoon Asia was a very good article. I think it is great that you choose this article. One thing that is super cool is that they are figuring out the different monsoon types and tracking where they have been. So over all great article and it was very informative.

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Now they are figuring out the patterns of the Monsoons

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I thought the facts/information was very interesting. It had a lot of nice information. I did not know that the English and Dutch started the second initiatives.

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I thought the powtoon was great, but it would have been even better if you did a voice over and had some pictures.

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I liked the powtoon because of the random facts on the culture there. I also liked how there was no sound to distract from the facts.

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The information in the powtoon was useful. Informing us on Monsoon Asia's the culture, physical elements, population, and religion. For example that Asia is home to largest mountains with Mt. Everest being the tallest.

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I thought the article "Plane Crash" was very interesting from when I read the article title to the actual article. It was about a plane from Indonesia, and there was 155 people boarded on the plane along with 7 crew members. Sadly, the plane crashed. I can not imagine receiving a call saying one of my loved ones died in a plane crash. I feel so bad for all of those people that died families having to go through that. Not one person survived the terrible plane crash. It makes me feel so sad for all of those lives that were taken away and the families having to live with that for the rest of their lives. I just can not imagine having someone I love die in a plane crash it just sounds so terrible and makes me feel so bad to anyone who lost a loved one in that crash.

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All those monsoons, and the picture in the article looks like that they are so used to it they it does not even bother them.

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The Article "Plane Crash" was about 155 people who got in a plane crash and none of them survived. I thought it was really sad that not one person survived. There was also 7 crew members on board that did not survive either. If i heard that a family member died on a plane crash I would be in shock. I am hoping all the people that lost a family member in the crash are ok. I still can't believe that this had to happen again like all the other plane crashes in the world

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The article Mountain Ranges in Asia was about the 9 main mountain ranges and some characteristics about each one for example the Himalayas are a huge mountain range and the largest mountain in the world Mt. Everest is in the range

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I think the floods in the phillipines are a big problem because if the capital gets destroied then the government will have a big problem.

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The info in this artical is very thorow and good. The artical explains the situation very well about the global warming with lots of good facts plus some extras. The solution they came up with is very reallistic and might work based on data and facts. This is a very interesting artical and I was happy to read it and now I think that if people work together to save the earth, then global warming will be decreased for a long time from all of the solutions made by people can save the Earth.

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I thought this article was very interesting and sad. It was about how a plane crashed in Indonesia. There were 155 people and 7 crew members on the plane. I can't imagine what the families of the people who died in the crash are going through right now. If I found out that one of my loved ones died in a plane crash I would be totally shocked. It is very sad that not one person on that plane survied the crash.

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I think it's weird how you need all this rain for plants and it causes floods and damage but hurts them at the same time with damage to their city

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I thought that it was very interesting that India and China were currently the number one and number four annual emitters of CO2 poulition in the world. Also Asia contributes the most CO2 emisions in all of the world.Also that Asia is impacted a lot by global warming and all the heat and the increases in the sea.

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I thought facts/information was very in formative and very helpful. It had a lot of nice information.

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I read the article "Plane Crash" and think that it was really sad but lets us know the things that really happen.

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The article "Plane Crash" made me think about all the recent plane crashes that we have had in the last year. I think that we should find a way to fix this problem. It could be fixed by fuel efficient planes or planes flown by a computer.

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Earth And Climate made the world look like a water park but not in a good way.

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The plane crash that happened in AsiaAir is a sad event to those people who have died and to the people whose families will never come back. They need to have cameras in the plane to see what goes wrong every time there is a plane crash. It was a sad article but it was well made.

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The Asian monsoon already existed 40 million years ago during a period of high atmospheric carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures, reports an international research team led by a University of Arizona geoscientist.

Scientists thought the climate pattern known as the Asian monsoon began 22-25 million years ago as a result of the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya Mountains.

"It is surprising," said lead author Alexis Licht, now a research associate in the UA department of geosciences. "People thought the monsoon started much later."

The monsoon, the largest climate system in the world, governs the climate in much of mainland Asia, bringing torrential summer rains and dry winters.

Co-author Jay Quade, a UA professor of geosciences, said, "This research compellingly shows that a strong Asian monsoon system was in place at least by 35-40 million years ago."

The research by Licht and his colleagues shows the earlier start of the monsoon occurred at a time when atmospheric CO2 was three to four times greater than it is now. The monsoon then weakened 34 million years ago when atmospheric CO2 then decreased by 50 percent and an ice age occurred.

Licht said the study is the first to show the rise of the monsoon is as much a result of global climate as it is a result of topography. The team's paper is scheduled for early online publication in the journal Nature on Sept. 14.

"This finding has major consequences for the ongoing global warming," he said. "It suggests increasing the atmospheric CO2 will increase the monsoonal precipitation significantly."

Unraveling the monsoon's origins required contributions from three different teams of scientists that were independently studying the environment of 40 million years ago.

All three investigations showed the monsoon climate pattern occurred 15 million years earlier than previously thought. Combining different lines of evidence from different places strengthened the group's confidence in the finding, Licht said. The climate modeling team also linked the development of the monsoon to the increased CO2 of the time.

Licht and his colleagues at Poitiers and Nancy universities in France examined snail and mammal fossils in Myanmar. The group led by G. Dupont-Nivet and colleagues at Utrecht University in the Netherlands studied lake deposits in Xining Basin in central China. J.-B. Ladant and Y. Donnadieu of the Laboratory of Sciences of the Climate and Environment (LSCE) in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, created climate simulations of the Asian climate 40 million years ago.

A complete list of authors of the group's publication, "Asian monsoons in a late Eocene greenhouse world," is at the bottom of this release, as is a list of funding sources.

Licht didn't set out to study the origin of the monsoon.

He chose his study site in Myanmar because the area was rich in mammal fossils, including some of the earliest ancestors of modern monkeys and apes. The research, part of his doctoral work at the University of Poitiers, focused on understanding the environments those early primates inhabited. Scientists thought those primates had a habitat like the current evergreen tropical rain forests of Borneo, which do not have pronounced differences between wet and dry seasons.

To learn about the past environment, Licht analyzed 40-million-year-old freshwater snail shells and teeth of mammals to see what types of oxygen they contained. The ratio of two different forms of oxygen, oxygen-18 and oxygen-16, shows whether the animal lived in a relatively wet climate or an arid one.

"One of the goals of the study was to document the pre-monsoonal conditions, but what we found were monsoonal conditions," he said.

To his surprise, the oxygen ratios told an unexpected story: The region had a seasonal pattern very much like the current monsoon - dry winters and very rainy summers.

"The early primates of Myanmar lived under intense seasonal stress - aridity and then monsoons," he said. "That was completely unexpected."

The team of researchers working in China found another line of evidence pointing to the existence of the monsoon about 40 million years ago. The monsoon climate pattern generates winter winds that blow dust from central Asia and deposits it in thick piles in China. The researchers found deposits of such dust dating back 41 million years ago, indicating the monsoon had occurred that long ago.

The third team's climate simulations indicated strong Asian monsoons 40 million years ago. The simulations showed the level of atmospheric CO2 was connected to the strength of the monsoon, which was stronger 40 million years ago when CO2 levels were higher and weakened 34 million years ago when CO2 levels dropped.

Licht's next step is to investigate how geologically short-term increases of atmospheric CO2 known as hyperthermals affected the monsoon's behavior 40 million years ago.

"The response of the monsoon to those hyperthermals could provide interesting analogs to the ongoing global warming," he said.
Researcher contact information:
Alexis Licht
University of Arizona
alicht@email.arizona.edu
Languages spoken: French and English

Jay Quade
University of Arizona
quadej@email.arizona.edu
(520) 626-1847

Jean-Jacques Jaeger
University of Poitiers (France)
+33549453758
jean-jacques.jaeger@univ-poitiers.fr

Guillaume Dupont-Nivet
University of Rennes (France)
+493319775784 (currently in Potsdam, Germany)
guillaume.dupont-nivet@univ-rennes1.fr

Yannick Donnadieu
+33169088666
Laboratory of Sciences of the Climate and Environment (France)
Yannick.Donnadieu@lsce.ipsl.fr
Related Web sites:
Alexis Licht: http://www.ipgp.fr/~licht/index.html

Jay Quade: http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Quade

UA Geosciences: http://www.geo.arizona.edu/
Complete list of authors and their affiliations:
A. Licht (University of Arizona, Tucson; University of Poitiers, France; and Centre of Petrographic and Geochemical Research (CRPG), Vandoeuvre les Nancy, France); M. van Cappelle (Utrecht University, Netherlands and Imperial College, London); H. A. Abels (Utrecht University, Netherlands and University of Leuven, Belgium); J.-B. Ladant (Laboratory of Sciences of the Climate and Environment (LSCE), Gif-sur-Yvette, France); J. Trabucho-Alexandre (Durham University, U.K); C. France-Lanord (CRPG, Vandoeuvre les Nancy, France); Y. Donnadieu (LSCE, Gif-sur-Yvette, France); J. Vandenberghe (Vrije University, Amsterdam): T. Rigaudier (CRPG, Vandoeuvre les Nancy, France); C. Lécuyer (University of Lyon, France); D. Terry Jr. (Temple University, Philadelphia); R. Adriaens (University of Leuven, Belgium); A. Boura (Pierre and Marie Curie University and National Museum of Natural History, Paris); Z. Guo (Peking University, Beijing); Aung Naing Soe (Defence Services Academy, Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar); J. Quade (University of Arizona, Tucson); G. Dupont-Nivet (University of Leuven, Belgium; Peking University, Beijing; University of Rennes, France; University of Potsdam, Germany); J.-J. Jaeger (University of Poitiers, France).

The research was supported by the following organizations: 09-BLAN-0238-02 Program of the French National Research Agency (ANR); the Universities of Poitiers and Nancy; the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO-ALW); the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (CIG) 294282; the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; the French Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of Higher Education and Research; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Chinese Ministry of Education; the National Natural Science Foundation of China; and the Fyssen Foundation.

University of Arizona

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Asian monsoon much older than previously thought

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The Asian monsoon already existed 40 million years ago during a period of high atmospheric carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures, reports an international research team led by a University of Arizona geoscientist. Scientists thought the climate pattern known as the Asian monsoon began 22-25 million years ago as a result of the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya Mountains.

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Eastern Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan have been hit by torrential rain, causing floods which have killed at least 80 people.

Officials said 34 died in the Sarobi district alone, around 65 km (40 miles) east of the Afghan capital Kabul.

Pakistan's biggest city Karachi was also badly affected, with at least 16 killed after days of flooding.

The region has suffered devastating floods during the monsoon period for the past three years.

Afghan officials said that emergency teams and supplies were being dispatched to affected areas.

Hundreds have been displaced in eastern areas of Afghanistan and hundreds of hectares of farmland destroyed, Ghulam Farooq, the head of emergency operations for Afghanistan's National Disaster Management Authority, told AFP news agency.

The floods have caused extensive damage to property in both countries.

The Pakistani army was called in to help the clean-up in Karachi, where local media reports say sewage and rainwater have blocked some of the main roads.

The fatalities in the city have been mostly due to electrocution or collapsing roofs and walls. The floods are also reported to have left many areas of the city without power.

In Pakistan's north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, many houses were swept away by the torrent, officials said.

Pakistani disaster response officials have warned that more rain may be on the way over the coming days.

In 2010, Pakistan was hit by the worst monsoon floods in 80 years. Almost 1,800 people were killed and 21 million people affected.

Flooding in each of the following two years also left hundreds dead.

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Eastern Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan have been hit by torrential rain, causing floods which have killed at least 80 people. Officials said 34 died in the Sarobi district alone, around 65 km (40 miles) east of the Afghan capital Kabul. Pakistan's biggest city Karachi was also badly affected, with at least 16 killed after days of flooding.

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Seven crew members and 155 passengers were aboard -- almost one-third from the same Christian denomination.

There was no single reason that members of Mawar Sharon, a Protestant faith with about 45,000 members around Indonesia, got on the AirAsia Airbus plane Sunday, beyond a common desire to get to Singapore in time for New Year's Eve. They weren't heading to one event. They didn't all necessarily know one another, having attended services at different churches mostly around Surabaya, the Indonesian city where the commercial airliner took off.

Still, their religion tied them together. And pastor Lianggone Tejo Bunarto says he hopes that those shared beliefs help their loved ones cope now, as the search for more crash victims continues in the Java Sea.

As Bunarto says, "We're putting trust in God's hands."

Pastor: 'Put our trust' in God's will

About 50 people with relatives on QZ8501 spent part of Friday afternoon inside a special church for police officers in Surabaya. It wasn't a Mawar Sharon church; it was chosen because it's near the hospital where recovered bodies are being identified. But it served the same purpose: to allow the grieving to congregate, to reflect and to voice their beliefs.

So they did, holding their hands high at times, holding each other's hands in prayers at others. They sang, the anguish in their faces starkly evident.

Afterward, church members preferred not to talk to reporters. But Bunarto, who is a pastor to some of those on Flight QZ8501, did.

He acknowledges the struggles these Mawar Sharon members, not to mention scores of other families, are facing. They may not understand why the plane went down. They may have trouble waiting for definitive word that their loved ones have been recovered, if that ever happens. And, despite their fervent faith, they might not grasp God's role in all of it.

Bunarto says, "Some things that happen in our lives, sometimes we just don't understand what God really intends."

That doesn't mean they lose faith.

According to the pastor, "We just put our trust -- everything, completely -- in his will. Because he's going to bring everything (that is) the best in our life."

CNN's Gary Tuchman reported from Surabaya, as did CNN's Dominique Van Heerden. Greg Botelho wrote this story from Atlanta.

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46 members of denomination on doomed airasia flight - cnn

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46 members of denomination on doomed AirAsia flight - CNN

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Seven crew members and 155 passengers were aboard -- almost one-third from the same Christian denomination. There was no single reason that members of Mawar Sharon, a Protestant faith with about 45,000 members around Indonesia, got on the AirAsia Airbus plane Sunday, beyond a common desire to get to Singapore in time for New Year's Eve.

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Mountain Ranges of Asia - Landforms of Asia, Lakes, Rivers and Deserts of Asia - Worldatlas.com

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Map of landforms of Asia including the Himalayas, Ural Mountains, and major deserts, lakes and rivers. Worldatlas.com

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Asia includes many nations. Global warming solutions include small-scale and large-scale ideas like cleaner cookstoves, improved rice cultivation, and cutting coal dependence.

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Asia is the largest of the world's continents, covering approximately 30 percent of the Earth's land area. It is also the world's most populous continent, with roughly 60 percent of the total population.

Asia makes up the eastern portion of the Eurasian supercontinent; Europe occupies the western portion. The border between the two continents is debated. However, most geographers define Asia's western border as an indirect line that follows the Ural Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, and the Caspian and Black Seas. Asia is bordered by the Arctic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

Asia's physical geography, environment and resources, and human geography can be considered separately.

Asia can be divided into five major physical regions: mountain systems; plateaus; plains, steppes, and deserts; freshwater environments; and saltwater environments.

Mountain Systems

The Himalaya mountains extend for about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles), separating the Indian subcontinent from the rest of Asia. The Indian subcontinent, once connected to Africa, collided with the Eurasian continent about 50 million to 55 million years ago, forming the Himalayas. The Indian subcontinent is still crashing northward into Asia, and the Himalayas are growing about 5 centimeters (2 inches) every year.

The Himalayas cover more than 612,000 square kilometers (236,000 square miles), passing through the northern states of India and making up most of the terrain of Nepal and Bhutan. The Himalayas are so vast that they are composed of three different mountain belts. The northernmost belt, known as the Great Himalayas, has the highest average elevation at 6,096 meters (20,000 feet). The belt contains nine of the highest peaks in the world, which all reach more than 7,925 meters (26,000 feet) tall. This belt includes the highest mountain summit in the world, Mount Everest, which stands at 8,850 meters (29,035 feet).

The Tien Shan mountain system stretches for about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles), straddling the border between Kyrgyzstan and China. The name Tien Shan means "Celestial Mountains" in Chinese. The two highest peaks in the Tien Shan are Victory Peak, which stands at 7,439 meters (24,406 feet), and Khan Tängiri Peak, which stands at 6,995 meters (22,949 feet). Tien Shan also has more than 10,100 square kilometers (3,900 square miles) of glaciers. The largest glacier is Engil'chek Glacier, which is about 60 kilometers (37 miles) long.

The Ural Mountains run for approximately 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) in an indirect north-south line from Russia to Kazakhstan. The Ural Mountains are some of the world's oldest, at 250 million to 300 million years old. Millions of years of erosion have lowered the mountains significantly, and today their average elevation is between 914 and 1,220 meters (3,000 to 4,000 feet). The highest peak is Mount Narodnaya at 1,895 meters (6,217 feet).

Plateaus

Asia is home to many plateaus, areas of relatively level high ground. The Iranian plateau covers more than 3.6 million square kilometers (1.4 million square miles), encompassing most of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The plateau is not uniformly flat, but contains some high mountains and low river basins. The highest mountain peak is Damavand, at 5,610 meters (18,410 feet). The plateau also has two large deserts, the Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut.

The Deccan Plateau makes up most of the southern part of India. The plateau's average elevation is about 600 meters (2,000 feet). It is bordered by three mountain ranges: the Satpura Range in the north, and the Eastern and Western Ghats on either side. The plateau and its main waterways-the Godavari and Krishna rivers-gently slope toward the Eastern Ghats and the Bay of Bengal.

The Tibetan Plateau is usually considered the largest and highest area ever to exist in the history of Earth. Known as the "Rooftop of the World," the plateau covers an area about half the size of the contiguous United States and averages more than 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) above sea level. The Tibetan Plateau is extremely important to the world's water cycle because of its tremendous number of glaciers. These glaciers contain the largest volume of ice outside the poles. The ice and snow from these glaciers feed Asia's largest rivers. Approximately 2 billion people depend on the rivers fed by the plateau's glaciers.

Plains, Steppes, and Deserts

The West Siberian Plain, located in central Russia, is considered one of the world's largest areas of continuous flatland. It extends from north to south about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) and from west to east about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles). With more than 50 percent of its area at less than 100 meters (330 feet) above sea level, the plain contains some of the world's largest swamps and flood plains.

Central Asia is dominated by a steppe landscape, a large area of flat, unforested grassland. Mongolia can be divided into different steppe zones: the mountain forest steppe, the arid steppe, and the desert steppe. These zones transition from the country's mountainous region in the north to the Gobi Desert on the southern border with China.

The Rub' al Khali desert, considered the world's largest sand sea, covers an area larger than France across Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. It holds roughly half as much sand as Africa's Sahara desert, even though it is 15 times smaller in size. The desert is known as the Empty Quarter because it is virtually inhospitable to humans except for Bedouin tribes that live on its edges.

Freshwater

Lake Baikal, located in southern Russia, is the deepest lake in the world, reaching a depth of 1,620 meters (5,315 feet). The lake contains 20 percent of the world's unfrozen freshwater, making it the largest reservoir on Earth. It is also the world's oldest lake, at 25 million years old.

The Yangtze is the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world (behind the Amazon of South America and the Nile of Africa). Reaching 6,300 kilometers (3,915 miles) in length, the Yangtze moves east from the glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau to the river's mouth on the East China Sea. The Yangtze is considered the lifeblood of China. It drains one-fifth of the country's land area, is home to one-third of its population, and contributes greatly to China's economy.

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers begin in the highlands of eastern Turkey and flow through Syria and Iraq, joining in the city of Qurna, Iraq, before emptying into the Persian Gulf. The land between the two rivers, known as Mesopotamia, was the center of the earliest civilizations, including Sumer and the Akkadian Empire. Today, the Tigris-Euphrates river system is under threat from increased agricultural and industrial use. These pressures have caused desertification and increased salts in the soil, severely damaging local watershed habitats.

Saltwater

The Persian Gulf has an area of more than 234,000 square kilometers (90,000 square miles). It borders Iran, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq. The gulf is subject to high rates of evaporation, making it shallow and extremely salty. The seabed beneath the Persian Gulf contains an estimated 50 percent of the world's oil reserves. The countries that border the gulf have engaged in a number of disputes over this rich resource.

The Sea of Okhotsk covers 1.5 million square kilometers (611,000 square miles) between the Russian mainland and the Kamchatka Peninsula. The sea is largely frozen between October and March. Large ice floes make winter navigation almost impossible.

The Bay of Bengal is the largest bay in the world, covering almost 2.2 million square kilometers (839,000 square miles) and bordering Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, and Burma. Many large rivers, including the Ganges and Brahmaputra, empty into the bay. The briny wetlands formed by the Ganges-Brahmaputra on the Bay of Bengal is the largest delta in the world.

Terrestrial Flora and Fauna

Botanists nickname China the "Mother of Gardens." It has more flowering plant species than North and South America combined. Because China has such diverse landscapes, from the arid Gobi Desert to the tropical rain forests of Yunnan Province, many flowers can adapt to climates all over the world. From roses to peonies, many familiar flowers most likely originated in northern China. China is the likely origin of such fruit trees as peaches and oranges. China is also home to the dawn redwood, the only redwood tree found outside North America.

Asia's diverse physical and cultural landscape has dictated the way animals have been domesticated. In the Himalayas, communities use yaks as beasts of burden. Yaks are large animals related to cattle, but with a thick fiber coat and the ability to survive in the oxygen-poor high altitude of the mountains. Yaks are not only used for transportation and for pulling plows, but their coats are sources of warm, hardy fiber. Yak milk is used for butter and cheese.

In the Mongolian steppe, the two-humped Bactrian camel is the traditional beast of burden. Bactrian camels are critically endangered in the wild. The camel's humps store nutrient-rich fat, which the animal can use in times of drought, heat, or frost. Its size and ability to adapt to hardship make it an ideal pack animal. Bactrians can actually outrun horses over long distances. These camels were the traditional animals used in caravans on the Silk Road, the legendary trade route linking eastern Asia with India and the Middle East.

Aquatic Flora and Fauna

The freshwater and marine habitats of Asia offer incredible biodiversity.

Lake Baikal's age and isolation make it a unique biological site. Aquatic life has been able to evolve for millions of years relatively undisturbed, producing a rich variety of flora and fauna. The lake is known as the "Galápagos of Russia" because of its importance to the study of evolutionary science. It has 1,340 species of animals and 570 species of plants.

Hundreds of Lake Baikal's species are endemic, meaning they are found nowhere else on Earth. The Baikal seal, for instance, is one of the few freshwater seal species in the world. The Baikal seal feeds primarily on the Baikal oil fish and the omul. Both fishes are similar to salmon, and provide fisheries for the communities on the lake.

The Bay of Bengal, on the Indian Ocean, is one of the world's largest tropical marine ecosystems. The bay is home to dozens of marine mammals, including the bottlenose dolphin, spinner dolphin, spotted dolphin, and Bryde's whale. The bay also supports healthy tuna, jack, and marlin fisheries.

Some of the bay's most diverse array of organisms exist along its coasts and wetlands. Many wildlife reserves in and around the bay aim to protect its biological diversity.

The Sundarbans is a wetland area that forms at the delta of the Ganges and Brahamaputra rivers. The Sundarbans is a huge mangrove forest. Mangroves are hardy trees that are able to withstand the powerful, salty tides of the Bay of Bengal as well as the freshwater flows from the Ganges and Brahamaputra. In addition to mangroves, the Sundarbans is forested by palm trees and swamp grasses.

The swampy jungle of the Sundarbans supports a rich animal community. Hundreds of species of fish, shrimp, crabs, and snails live in the exposed root system of the mangrove trees. The Sundarbans supports more than 200 species of aquatic and wading birds. These small animals are part of a food web that includes wild boar, macaque monkeys, monitor lizards, and a healthy population of Bengal tigers.

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Asia is the largest of the world's continents, covering approximately 30 percent of the Earth's land area. It is also the world's most populous continent, with roughly 60 percent of the total population. Asia makes up the eastern portion of the Eurasian supercontinent; Europe occupies the western portion.

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Asia facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Asia

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Get information, facts, and pictures about Asia at Encyclopedia.com. Make research projects and school reports about Asia easy with credible articles from our FREE, online encyclopedia and dictionary.

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For much of Asia, the pace of life is tuned to rhythms of monsoons.

The summer rainy season is especially important for securing the water and food supplies for more than a billion people. Its variations can mean the difference between drought and flood. Now a Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego-led study reports on a crucial connection that could drastically improve the ability of forecasters to reliably predict the monsoon a few months in advance.

Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie from Scripps and colleagues from NOAA found that a winter appearance of the climate phenomenon called El Niño in the Pacific Ocean can leave its mark on monsoon formation in the Indian Ocean a full six months later. In between is an atmospheric phenomenon called the Pacific-Japan pattern that provides the teleconnection between the two ocean basins and further poleward to East Asia.

"It has long been a mystery that climate anomalies in the region correlate better with El Niño in the preceding winter than with the one developing in the concurrent summer," said Xie, a climate scientist and inaugural holder of the Scripps Roger Revelle Chair in Environmental Science. "The new paper shows that Indian Ocean temperature and atmospheric anomalies in the western Pacific are physically coupled, and their interactions amplify each other. We demonstrated that this new mode of coupled ocean-atmospheric anomalies is predictable a season ahead. Such predictions have tremendous benefits to society."

The National Science Foundation-funded study, "Origin of seasonal predictability for summer climate over the Northwestern Pacific," appears online on April 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ngar-Cheung Lau and Gabriel Vecchi of NOAA are also co-authors.

El Niño is a climate phenomenon coupling the ocean and atmosphere that includes a shift in the distribution of warm water in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. El Niño years are characterized by unusual weather and storm activity globally.

The summer after a major El Niño features above-average sea-surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean. El Niño exerts its influence via the Pacific-Japan pattern, which can bring to East Asia cool, wet weather in the subsequent summer, while La Niña leads to dry, hot weather.

The violent storm activity associated with El Niño takes place in the eastern Pacific Ocean, but the chain of events the researchers describe ultimately ends up being detected in the western Pacific Ocean. Xie likened it to an echo effect, saying that El Niño serves to pull clouds and convection eastward toward the International Date Line, which means those clouds are not available over the western Pacific to keep ocean surface temperatures cool. It also weakens winds in the northern Indian Ocean and the effects of those weakened winds travel back eastward to the Pacific Ocean.

"The last sound El Niño makes is in the western Pacific Ocean," Kosaka said, "because the positive feedback between the Indian Ocean and Pacific-Japan pattern we found amplifies climate anomalies in this region."

The last echoes of El Niño have devastating consequences to the region.

Extremes in the East Asian summer monsoon have been behind some of the largest natural and economic disasters to hit the region in the last 20 years. The authors note that excessive rains and cool temperature in Japan in 1993 caused a widespread failure of that country's rice crop that opened it to imports from other countries. Dry monsoon phases led to widespread heat waves and drought in several East Asian countries in 2004.

Kosaka cautioned, however, that there is much more work to be done to make prediction of the Asian monsoon reliable. El Niño is just one factor; other regional patterns complicate the sequence that ultimately produces monsoon rains, Kosaka said.

But the paper does establish that El Niño influences the monsoon and describes the means by which it does so, she said.

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geography; oceanography; weather; environmental awareness; climate; global warming; severe weather; earth science

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Asian monsoon is getting predictable: Strong correlation between summer monsoon and preceding climate pattern

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For much of Asia, the pace of life is tuned to rhythms of monsoons. Its variations can mean the difference between drought and flood. Now a new study reports on a crucial connection that could drastically improve the ability of forecasters to reliably predict the monsoon a few months in advance.