Integrated model shows that atmospheric brown clouds and greenhouse gases have reduced rice harvests in India
- *Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, 207 Giannini Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-3310; and
- †Scripps Institution of Oceanography and
- §Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0221
See allHide authors and affiliations
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Contributed by V. Ramanathan, October 31, 2006 (received for review August 9, 2006)

Abstract
Previous studies have found that atmospheric brown clouds partially offset the warming effects of greenhouse gases. This finding suggests a tradeoff between the impacts of reducing emissions of aerosols and greenhouse gases. Results from a statistical model of historical rice harvests in India, coupled with regional climate scenarios from a parallel climate model, indicate that joint reductions in brown clouds and greenhouse gases would in fact have complementary, positive impacts on harvests. The results also imply that adverse climate changes due to brown clouds and greenhouse gases contributed to the slowdown in harvest growth that occurred during the past two decades.
Footnotes
- ‡To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: vramanathan{at}ucsd.edu
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Author contributions: M.A., V.R., and J.R.V. contributed equally to this work; M.A., V.R., and J.R.V. designed research; M.A., V.R., and J.R.V. performed research; V.R. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; M.A. analyzed data; and J.R.V. wrote the paper.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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See Commentary on page 19609.
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This article contains supporting information (SI) online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0609584104/DC1.
- Abbreviations:
- ABC,
- atmospheric brown cloud;
- GHG,
- greenhouse gas;
- PCM,
- parallel climate model.
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Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
- © 2006 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
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