Changing Climate: Rajasthan’s Thar Desert May Turn Green by End of This Century!

New Delhi: The Thar Desert in Rajasthan is expected to transform into a lush green region suitable for agriculture by the end of this century, say researchers.

A new study, published in the journal Earth’s Future, has predicted this unexpected future for the Thar Desert. Studying a combination of observations and climate model simulations, the research team found that the mean rainfall over the Thar Desert is experiencing an increase of 10-50 percent rainfall between 1901 and 2015.

Because of the continuing climate change, this rainfall in Thar region is anticipated to increase by 50-200 percent.

The researchers feel there will be a westward shift of monsoons which may radically transform the Thar region.

According to the study’s corresponding author, B. N. Goswami, from the Department of Physics at Cotton University in Guwahati, says this phenomenon is unique to the Indian monsoon and is crucial for the potential greening of semi-arid regions in northwest India.

The study emphasizes that this trend could lead to significant agricultural and socio-economic changes in the region.

A team of researchers, including P. V. Rajesh from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, compiled weather data from South Asia over the past 50 years to come up with this study.

The results of their analysis indicate that the Indian monsoon is expanding westward, leading to a 10 per cent decrease in mean rainfall in the northeast and a 25 per cent increase in the west and north-west.