Monsoon As Method

An edited volume by Monsoon Assemblages, a European Research Council funded research project. The book presents the methods that Monsoon Assemblages has evolved for engaging the monsoon, a globally connected weather system, as a coproducer of urban life and space in South and Southeast Asian cities. It challenges views of climate as an inert backdrop to urban life, instead suggesting that it is materially and spatially active in shaping urban politics, ecologies, infrastructures, buildings and bodies. It combines critical texts with cartography, photography and ethnography to present the project’s methodology and its outcomes and invites urban practitioners to think differently about space, time, representation and human and non-human agency. It offers intra-disciplinary, intra-active methods for rethinking human and non-human relations with weather in ways that meet the challenges of climate change and the Anthropocene.

On 20th May the Indian summer monsoon will begin to envelop the country in two great wet arms, one coming from the east, the other from the west. They are united over central India around 10th July, a date that can be calculated within seven or eight days. Alexander Frater aims to follow the monsoon, staying sometimes behind it, sometimes in front of it, and everywhere watching the impact of this extraordinary phenomenon. During the anxious period of waiting, the weather forecaster is king, consulted by pie-crested cockatoos, and a joyful period ensues: there is a period of promiscuity, and scandals proliferate. Frater's journey takes him to Bangkok and the cowboy town on the Thai-Malaysian border to Rangoon and Akyab in Burma (where the front funnels up between the mountains and the sea). His fascinating narrative reveals the exotic, often startling, discoveries of an ambitious and irresistibly romantic adventurer.

On the world maps common in America, the Western Hemisphere lies front and center, while the Indian Ocean region all but disappears. This convention reveals the geopolitical focus of the now-departed twentieth century, but in the twenty-first century that focus will fundamentally change. In this pivotal examination of the countries known as “Monsoon Asia”—which include India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania—bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan shows how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power. It is here that the fight for democracy, energy independence, and religious freedom will be lost or won, and it is here that American foreign policy must concentrate if the United States is to remain relevant in an ever-changing world. From the Horn of Africa to the Indonesian archipelago and beyond, Kaplan exposes the effects of population growth, climate change, and extremist politics on this unstable region, demonstrating why Americans can no longer afford to ignore this important area of the world.

The Asian Summer Monsoon: Characteristics, Variability, Teleconnections and Projection focuses on the connections between the Indian Summer and East Asian Summer Monsoons, also including the South China Sea Summer Monsoon. While these systems have profound differences, their interactions have significant impacts on the climatic regimes in the region and throughout the world. In summer, the ASM engine pumps moisture transported across thousands of miles from the Indian and Pacific Oceans to the monsoon regions, producing heavy rains over south and east Asia and its adjacent marginal seas. This book reviews the different subsystems and their impact, providing guidance to enhance prediction models. Synthesizes the connections between the East Asian Summer Monsoon, the Indian Summer Monsoon and the Asian Summer Monsoon system Includes subsections on holistic characteristics, sub-seasonal and interannual variability, teleconnection patterns, and projections of future change Connects current theory and practice on Asian Monsoon forecasting, providing researchers with new skills and information to use in climate and weather forecasting

The hydrogeological aspect of groundwater science is universal and applied in nature to have a sustainable water resource development with social, economic, ecological, cultural and aesthetic background. Since 99% of the world's fresh available water is groundwater; yet, the majority of financial resources are directed to surface water found in rivers and lakes. This serious imbalance requires urgent redress. This volume is addresses the issue to facilitate the joint analysis of groundwater management studies and problems faced by scientist, engineers, managers and other scholars from natural and applied sciences. Significant financial support is required for basic groundwater research if sustainable development is to be a realistic goal. As a fresh water resource, groundwater has major advantages over surface water. This is the basic idea that explicitly appears in almost all paper of this book. The authors have tried to focus their task on those topics that seemed to us more urgent and relevant and have paid much attention to questions related to management of aquifers, groundwater pollution, the long-term problems and the key issues in developing countries, where majority of world population live and where at present enormous groundwater abstraction occurs. We (editors) have dissipated proper information in a systematic scientific manner to make the concept of groundwater management and sustainability understandable to everyone, through this book. The book provides a platform to bring together earth scientists, professionals from chemical and engineering science disciplines, public health professionals and social scientists involved with the management and development of groundwater resources. The book is expected to reflect the current understanding of all the issues related to management of groundwater resources and their sustainable use.

"An expressive story about seasons, extremes, and waiting." - Kirkus Reviews Children play, birds call, and grownups go about their business during the hot days of summer in northern India. But in the bustle of street and marketplace, everyone is watching, waiting for those magical clouds to bring their gift of rain to the land. Through the observations of one young girl, the scents and sounds, the dazzling colors and the breathless anticipation of a parched cityscape are vividly evoked during the final days before the welcome arrival of the monsoon.