Dwindling growth in rice harvests in India over recent decades may be due to large atmospheric brown clouds looming over the region, a new study by U. S. scientists published Monday suggests. Atmospheric brown clouds are drifting banks of air pollution that reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface, causing dryer, cooler, and dimmer surface conditions that could adversely affect important food crops. One of the largest of these clouds hovers over the Indian subcontinent, one of the world’s major rice-producing regions. To examine the effects of these clouds on rice harvests, researchers from University of California constructed a model that combines historical Indian rice harvest data with a climate model. They found that historical rice harvests would have been larger in the absence of these clouds, and larger still if reductions in the clouds were accompanied by reductions in greenhouse gases. Contrary to previous concerns that reducing the brown clouds could diminish harvests by unveiling the warming effects of greenhouse gases, these results suggest that reductions in these clouds, alone or in combination with reductions in greenhouse gases, would benefit rice harvests in India, the researchers say. The findings were reported Monday by […]