In recent decades, water stress in India has become increasingly severe. Lower crop yields, civil unrest, and increased political tensions have become more commonplace as severe weather events are becoming more extreme and sporadic. Because of this emerging reality and its potential consequences, it is vital to be able to anticipate potential changes in India’s precipitation rates as a byproduct of global climate change. Previous research points to an increase in precipitation as the climate warms, but with large regional disparity and more severe extremes in both rain events as well as droughts. To provide further support for this consensus across a variety of potential outcomes, multiple runs using the Global Circulation Model (GCM) EdGCM, have been used in an attempt to support these claims. These runs consist of different potential concentrations of major Greenhouse Gases based on a variety of possible trends found in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. This presentation will highlight expected changes in annual precipitation and interannual variability through the end of this century, as well as their underlying causes, in an attempt to determine potential issues facing future policymakers.
