They warned that the looming global climate change might cause more unstable weather and higher frequency of extreme rainfalls in the Cherrapunji region. "The situation in the Cherrapunji region may be even more dramatic," said Prof Leszek Starkel of the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation, Poland.

It is certainly one of world's unique geographic puzzles, the scientists opined.

Cherrapunji which fall close to the line of Tropic of Cancer, should have been a 'dry desert', just as it has been observed in other parts of the world situated on the similar latitude such as, the Great Indian desert of Rajasthan and the Sahara of Africa.

But quite the contrary, the scientists observed, Cherrapunji receives an average annual rainfall of about 12000mm and wears a verdant look.

What makes Cherrapunji, locally known as Sohra, so wet and what has been the impact of such excessive rains on the mountainous landscape? And more importantly, why is the wettest region faces the worst water scarcity in most of the months of a year?

All these questions brought together a distinguished group of earth scientists and geographers from the Polish Academy of Sciences and India's North Eastern Hill University, facilitated by an Inter-Governmental Programme of Co-operation between the Department of Science and Technology, India and Polish Committee for Scientific Research, Poland.

For the last five years, the Indo-Polish team comprised of three Polish scientists - Prof Leszek Starkel, Dr Roman Soja and Pawel Prokop and two Indian geographers, Prof Surendra Singh and Dr Hiambok J Syiemlieh, is trying to understand this amusing phenomenon.

The main objectives of the research were to examine the physical and hydrological elements. To understand the rainstorm characteristics and the conditions of water circulation, to measure and evaluate the intensity of rainfall, run off and denudation rates in the Cherrapunji region and to identify the causes of its geo-ecosystems degradation.

Recently, they published a monograph titled, 'Rainfall, runoff and soil erosion in the globally extreme humid area, Cherrapunji, India,' which explains Cherrapunji geographical behaviour.

"We worked on a small watershed called, Maw ki Syiem, as a research site for investigation of all the environmental characteristics, including rock structure, soil condition as well as rainstorm characteristics, which are directly linked with soil erosion," Prof Surendra Singh said. Detailed data was also gathered on the anthropogenic factors, that is for different land using activities in and around the area.

"We figured out why Cherrapunji behaves such a way it does," Singh said. First of all its location itself creates these extreme geo-ecosystems. The transverse location of the Meghalaya plateau between the Eastern Himalayas on its North and the Bay of Bengal in the South causes extreme rain fall as the moisture-laden winds come to direct contact with the plateau that stands like a steep wall rising more than 1000 meters above the sea level.

The ferocity of run off caused by extreme downpour led to complete wash away of the top soil down to the Bangladesh plains. This has been aggravated by indiscriminate deforestation due to limestone and coal mining activities for a very long time. "The abandoned limestone kilns all over the area suggest how the entire forest may have been cleared in the long past," Dr Singh said.

Is it really possible to recreate soil and forest in the area, for the team currently engaged in.

Prof Starkel appears to be quite optimistic though he admitted that the project could be expensive and time consuming.