The Future, Buried in the Deep
A scientist’s study of microscopic sediment in East Asia could hold a key to feeding 20 percent of the world
The rains of the East Asian Monsoon nourish the crops that feed more than a billion people. As the global climate shifts, the vast weather system could bring harvest-destroying typhoons—or no rain at all. In 2013, Richard Murray, a Boston University professor of earth and environment and director of the Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation, led an international team studying the monsoon’s sensitivity to a changing climate. Read in arts&sciences how they drilled deep beneath the ocean floor to unlock five million years’ worth of sediment—a time capsule of monsoons past that could help predict the future.