Grand plan to drought-proof India could reduce rainfall

The major engineering scheme aims to interlink several Indian rivers to support irrigation.

A gigantic plan to link several of India’s rivers and divert vast volumes of water for irrigation could result in reduced rainfall in already water-stressed regions, according to a paper1 published in Nature Communications last month. The water transfer could affect the climate systems driving the Indian monsoon and reduce September rainfall by as much as 12% in some of the country’s states, according to the study.