As the Ganges undercuts the edges of Green Island whole trees fall into the river - perhaps on their way to being fossilised.
[Photo © copyright Bob Spicer]

Green Island is a little over a kilometre in length and a few hundred metres wide. Here we collected the populations of leaves from 56 different species of trees shrubs and vines. After pressing, drying and mathematically scoring them CLAMP analysis positioned the Green Island vegetation near the Kerala sites we had previously analysed, but in an area of the three-dimensional plot that indicated they were from a slightly cooler site.

Because Green Island is on a flat delta plain I could use meteorological data in the form of a grid in which observations from individual meteorological stations can be interpolated (mathematically extrapolated) for sites such as Green Island that does not have its own measurements.

CLAMP showing the positions of modern forests determined by their leaf architecture.

The plot above shows the positions of the Indian forests that I have analysed so far. In this plot each ball represents a forest. Green Island is Labelled “Green” and the other labelled balls are forests in Kerala. The positions of balls are determined by the numerical score that describes leaf architecture for at least twenty species of woody trees, shrubs and vines from each forest.

Balls that plot close together indicate forests with similar leaf architectures, while that that plot far apart are very different. The balls are colour coded such that blue represents cool climates and red ones hot climates. Orange, green and light blue indicate forests growing in intermediate climates. It is easy to see that the Indian forests (coded maroon) all lie in the warm end of the plot.

In this plot the Indian forests have been treated as if they were fossils. They have found their own position with respect to the other sites for which the climate is known. Despite the fact that the Indian sites all plot close to other warm sites they form a group beyond the limits of the existing cloud of sites, and using this calibration all the Indian sites yield a climate prediction that is several degrees colder than that which is observed.

The next stage is to include the Indian observed climate information so that the shape of the plot will change and the ability of the method to give accurate results for fossils that represent ancient forests growing in warm climates does not suffer from the same error of underestimating temperatures.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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Normally solitary, giant squirrels are
rarely seen together except about
breeding time.
[Photo © copyright Bob Spicer]

Recently I sampled six forests in Kerala, south India. At a latitude of around 9.5 °N they are well within the tropical zone, yet unlike many low latitude areas, they also experience marked variations in rainfall due to the influence of the Asian Monsoon. They never really dry out though, and so those lush forests host a large number of leeches that make sampling leaves a somewhat bloody affair. Apart from leeches the forests also support a rich variety of animal life such as giant squirrels (Ratufa indica), deer, and even wild elephants. Although Kerala promotes itself as a “green” state there are precious few undisturbed forests remaining. Most have been destroyed to plant tea and the destruction continues as multinational corporations have the power to buy up land and overpower conservation efforts. Soon there will be very little natural vegetation left save for a few protected reserves, with a consequent loss of biodiversity. Of course Kerala is not alone in losing its unique heritage this way, but it is particularly depressing to witness it first hand.

Tea plantations replace natural forest diversity, leaving only a few remnant trees as witnesses to what once was.
[Photo © copyright Bob Spicer]

Leaves from each of these modern sites are numerically scored and analysed using a technique called CLAMP. Results so far show that all the Kerala sites form a coherent cluster in a new area of what we call “physiognomic space” and thus provide opportunities for recalibrating CLAMP for low latitudes, both now and in the past.

This is exactly what we were hoping for. Now I am in the process of collecting and collating decades worth of weather observations for these areas so that the calibration process can take place. At least I will continue to do that if the power stays on and the computers don’t overheat.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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I did not know quite what to expect when I arrived in the main entrance foyer of the Institute because laid out on the floor beneath the soaring curved staircase were mattresses covered in white sheets surrounding a temporary hearth that had been constructed the previous day. Sitting on the sheets, cross-legged were the staff of BSIP and directly next to the hearth were the BSIP Director, his wife, and a Brahmin priest.

The ceremony began with the priest chanting ancient shlokas, rhythmic poetic prayers, in Vedic Sanskrit.  Sanskrit is the oldest continuously spoken language in the world and as early as 1500 BC its structure, as preserved in the oldest Hindu texts known as the Vedas, is so refined that it clearly has a common older source. Sanskrit is the basis of religious texts in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. It is the oldest known member of the Indo-European family of languages.

As the prayers proceeded and incense sticks were ignited, offerings of rose petals, ghee, sugar solution, and rice were prepared. Then small dry branches of mango wood were arranged within the hearth and set alight. As the smoke rose throughout the building and the prayers continued, we all added the offerings of herbs and other aromatic elements to the fire. I have no knowledge of Sanskrit but I can say that the rhythmic sounds of it expertly spoken were incredibly soothing.  

Sanskrit rythmic poetic prayers and perfumed smoke permeate the BSIP building.
[photo © copyright Bob Spicer]

The prayers were ones for the general well-being, not only of the staff and the Institute, but for all humankind and our shared planet. The concept of such a ceremony is one of purification. There are sixteen such ceremonies in the life of a Hindu marking critical stages in the passage through life. What I was witnessing is the last in this succession. The sounds of the prayers and aroma of the perfumed smoke carried to all parts of the building cleansing and purifying. It was a ceremony that brought everyone together in a common purpose.

The ceremony concluded with the priest tying a length of hand-spun thread, dyed yellow with turmeric and red with turmeric mixed with lime, around our wrists, right hand wrists for the men and left hand wrists for the women. This was a symbol of our common purpose and a reminder of what we had participated in. In the past few days as I have been wearing mine, several people not connected with BSIP have asked how I came to have such a symbol. I have been pleased to explain.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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Whole populations of migrating frogs face death due to unseasonal rains.
[photo © copyright Bob Spicer]

Now however the migrating frogs are faced with mass mortality because the monsoon has not started and their premature migration is taking them to dry uplands where the lack of water will kill them.

In contrast, too much water is a killer elsewhere. In Bihar state, northeastern India, rapid fluctuations in the flow of the river Ganges has led to flooding and the death of many people who farm the floodplain. These violent fluctuations have been attributed to loss of the snow pack and glaciers in the Himalayas and Tibet, coupled with heavy downpours on the Gangetic plains. For the poor, malnutrition and disease follow loss of crops

As I have said before in these blogs, increased dry season precipitation and more erratic monsoon rains are exactly what we could expect from a warming on the Tibetan Plateau. It is likely that the future will bring more of the same weather-related problems.

If the “La Nina” event in the Pacific is linked to inconvenient spring weather in the UK and elsewhere, India faces more serious problems. Climate change is already devastating what is often marginal farming activity, but farming that is crucial to India’s ability to adequately feed its 1 billion (and rising) population.

Here there are demonstrations against food price inflation. This inflation is stoked by global demand for basic grain stocks:  a demand amplified by the use of crops, or farmland they are grown, on for biofuel production. I fear that this is only the beginning of global unrest resulting from climate change. India is taking the issue of climate change and all its consequences seriously, and has just announced the establishment of a national climate change centre in Chennai (Madras) so that it can prepare for an uncertain future.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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A domestic biogas plant viewed from the waste entry point, showing the reservoir and gas pipe.
[photo © copyright Bob Spicer]

This reservoir is weighted down with a small concrete block to produce the pressure that drives the gas through a flexible hose to the kitchen. There is no unpleasant smell either in the garden or the kitchen. The methane, which is a greenhouse gas some 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide and which would otherwise vent to the atmosphere, burns with a pale blue smoke-free flame in a conventional stove and produces carbon dioxide and water vapour free of toxins.

Clearly everybody wins with this system. Organic waste is disposed of without littering the streets or requiring collection, and the garden is fertilised leading to more vigorous plant growth and carbon dioxide capture. The lack of rubbish leads to low rodent and other pest populations. There are no transport costs, carbon or otherwise, in delivering the gas or removing the waste, and above all the energy is free. No wonder that most houses in Kerala have such a system, a system encouraged by the State Government. Perhaps if we in the so-called developed world were to follow India in this instance we too would be financially and environmentally better off.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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Polluting vehicles are banned from the Taj Mahal, so mowing green is the order of the day.
Photo © copyright Bob Spicer

However in Delhi in 1998 I remember literally choking on black soot-laden air in the evening rush hour. Most of the pollution was coming from the small three-wheeled autorickshaws or “tuk-tuks”. These ran on low-grade fossil fuel that was inefficiently burned in unsophisticated engines. Now all that has changed. In a draconian move, at the time unpopular but necessary, such vehicles were banned from the road across India and replaced with tuk-tuks running on compressed natural gas (CNG). This burns cleaner without the sooty particulates and can be made from renewable sources such as farm waste.

In Agra I saw what must have been close to a hundred tuk-tuks waiting in line to be filled with CNG. These vehicles, and their slightly larger cousins the Vikrams (which also run on CNG) provide a valuable public service in that for the modest sum of around 8 rupees (approximately 10p) you can be taken across town some 4km. This is often an exciting ride dodging in and out of the traffic, going the wrong way up dual carriageways and careering around the inevitable cow, buffalo or even elephant. However in a Vikram almost always you are sharing the experience with up to ten others crammed into a space about the size of the interior of a smallest of UK family cars - friendly, but very efficient.

Upon my return to Lucknow I went to the BBC News website to catch up on world events only to find an email there from someone recently returned from India. They had been stunned by the apparent road chaos here and complained that any attempt by the government to encourage “green” behaviour in the UK would be entirely negated by traffic growth in countries like India.

This is an often-used excuse for us in the more affluent parts of the world to do nothing in respect of tackling climate change. However it betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of traffic here. In India per capita private car ownership is a mere fraction of what it is in the UK, the cars are, on the whole, much smaller, and the vast majority of vehicles are, like the tuk-tuks and Vikrams, public service vehicles.

In Lucknow at least 20% of road vehicles are pedal rickshaws operated by farmers who rent the rickshaws by the day for around 30 rupees and make a living between sowing and harvesting taking people around the city in a low pollution, low carbon, way. Scooters and small motorcycles also abound. Although not very clean, they have a far better fuel consumption than the average UK car which on the commute runs tend to carry only the driver.

To be sure, as the Indian economy grows the car manufacturers will do their best to encourage the new Indian affluent to indulge their fantasies of the great green outdoors by driving all over it and destroying it further. TV ads here show a big, bright, shiny 4x4 charging across pristine wetland wilderness churning it into a quagmire, all in the name of appreciating “the environment”.

If only one in a hundred Indians bought such a vehicle, and did as the ads suggest, it would mean 10 million of them trashing the countryside. The antisocial consequences of owning such vehicles for purely leisure purposes, whether in the countryside or in towns (where, if you are interested in going anywhere, or even parking, small is practical), are becoming obvious here just as they are in the UK.

In cities and towns like Lucknow the smart money is on the status quo in that it represents high fuel efficiency per capita and low cost. However things are far from perfect. If only people here would obey some kind of highway code things would operate even better. As it is, it appears to be the one in front who has the right of way and it seems that nobody ever signals, looks left, right, or in their mirror before manoeuvring! At times it just seems like survival of the fittest.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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The 54 metre high Buland Darwaza Gate at the entrance to the Jama Masjid Mosque.
[Photo © copyright Bob Spicer]

The persistence of this problem and the dependency on the monsoon rains was brought home to me recently during a talk given by a PhD student, Vartika Singh, who was reporting on her work as part of the Quaternary Research Group here at BSIP. This group has made detailed studies of climate change in northwestern India over the past ten thousand years using, alongside the more conventional studies of fossil pollen, diatoms and dinoflagellates, magnetostratigraphy and radiocarbon dating techniques, and things called grass phytoliths.

Phytoliths are made of silica (like sand) and are secreted within and between cells. Amongst other things they serve as a deterrent against browsing. To counter this, grass-eating animals like the cow on Lucknow station, have developed teeth that constantly grow as they are worn down by the abrasive action of the phytoliths. Incidentally we see the same plant/animal “arms race” towards the end of the Cretaceous Period of geological history when similar dental replacement systems evolved in herbivorous dinosaurs. Grass-like phytoliths have been found in fossil dinosaur dung. Because there is no evidence in the Cretaceous for extensive grasslands the dinosaurs may well have also been feeding on the ancestors of modern horsetails or scouring rushes (Equisetum). These appear just about everywhere in the Cretaceous. Equisetum also possess phytoliths, which is why they can be used to scour pots and pans.

A dumbell-shaped grass phytolith. 100 placed end-to-end would measure 1 mm.  Image © copyright Bob Spicer ]

It turns out that phytoliths have shapes that are specific to particular kinds of grasses and, unlike the organic remains of the grasses, they preserve well in dry and semi dry environments. This means they are ideal for recording changes in vegetation in such drought-prone regions.

The work of Vertika Singh and colleagues shows that there have been significant changes over the last ten thousand years in the strength of the monsoon winds coming on to northwestern India from the Arabian Sea. These have affected the distribution of rainfall throughout the year. A weakened monsoon results in lower summer rainfall but wetter winters. A stronger monsoon leads to wetter summers but drier winters.

A weak monsoon and a more even distribution of rainfall coincided with the rise of the world’s earliest . Weakening of the monsoon occurred gradually from around 5,500 years ago and the weakening became more marked between 3,600 and 3,400 years ago. Thereafter, a strengthening monsoon led to winter drying and a decline in the Indus Valley agriculture and society.

Remembering that the Indus Valley agriculture supported the world’s first large scale cities and was the source of many aspects of Indian and global culture today, the influence of the monsoon on human history has been profound. However at present the interpretation of phytolith and other data in terms of monsoon dynamics necessarily remains a little speculative.

The next stage in this fascinating research is to apply the same techniques to the area that drives the monsoon - the Tibetan Plateau. Here aridity and a mainly grass-dominated vegetation favour phytolith studies. If changes in vegetation and climate on the plateau can be accurately characterised and dated, they can be compared to coincidental changes in northwestern India. By understanding better the Tibetan Plateau/monsoon links in this way it should be possible to predict more reliably future rainfall patterns upon which so many people in Asia depend.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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Dr Rakesh Mehrotra and PhD student
Gaurav Srivastava collecting a
CLAMP sample in Kukrail Forest.
[Photo © copyright Bob Spicer]

The forest itself was tinder dry and at this point in the dry season many trees begin to shed their leaves. This is an ideal time to take a CLAMP sample as the leaves are mature and in a state where they would naturally be shed and perhaps enter the fossil record. I reassured myself that no respecting crocodile would appreciate such dryness.

 As we moved through the forest collecting all the observable different shapes and sizes of leaves from species after specie,s we eventually came to a small river where water buffalo were wallowing.  Surely no self-respecting buffalo would be doing such a thing if there were the slightest chance of being regarded as lunch…

As it happened we did see crocodiles, or more accurately Ghariyals (Ghavialis gangeticus) . The long-snouted crocodilians were once common in the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers, but there they were safely behind a wire fence in an area set aside for the breeding programme. Throughout the day we collected 29 species of tree, shrub and vine leaves and are now on our way to building up an Indian CLAMP calibration.

Preliminary analysis indicates that, with the existing calibration, CLAMP underestimates the temperature of the Lucknow area, just as we suspected it might. This is because many of the species in the Kukrail Forest, like the crocodiles, have teeth and toothed leaves are most often found in cooler climates. The difference between the CLAMP estimate 15.4±3.4°C and the measured mean annual temperature of 24°C is significant enough to justify continued sampling of forests in India to improve the technique.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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