The India Climate Observatory

Commentary, action and research on climate and development in India

PM Modi at the Climate Action Summit

by Leave a Comment

From the Prime Minister’s Office, this is the text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address (the original in Hindi) on 23 September 2019, at the Climate Action Summit 2019 during the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, USA:

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi addressing at the (United Nations) Climate Action Summit- 2019, in New York, USA on September 23, 2019.

I thank UN Secretary General for organising the Global climate summit.
After having received the Champion of the Earth award last year, this is my first opportunity to address the United Nations. I am pleased that my first meeting during my visit to New York is on the subject of Climate.
Excellencies, various efforts are being made by different countries to fight climate change. We must accept that if we have to overcome a serious challenge like climate change, then what we are doing at the moment is just not enough.
What is needed today, is a comprehensive approach which covers everything from education to values, and from lifestyle to developmental philosophy. What we need is a global people’s movement to bring about behavioral change.
The respect for nature, the judicious use of resources, reducing our needs and living within our means have all been important aspects of both our traditions and present day efforts. Need not Greed has been our guiding principle.
And therefore India today has come not just to talk about the seriousness of this issue, but to present a practical approach and a roadmap. We believe that an ounce of practice is worth more than a ton of preaching.
In India, we are going to increase the share of non fossil fuel, and by 2022 we plan to increase our renewable energy capacity to much beyond 175 GW, and later till 450 GW. In India we have made plans to make our transport sector green through e mobility. India is also working to considerably increase the proportion of the biofuel blend in petrol and diesel.
We have provided clean cooking gas to 150 million families. We have launched the Jal Jeevan mission for water conservation, rainwater harvesting and for the development of water resources. India is going to spend approximately 50 billion dollars on this in the next few years.
On the International forum, almost 80 countries have joined our International Solar Alliance campaign. India and Sweden together with other partners are launching the Leadership group within the Industry transition track. This initiative will provide a platform for governments and the private sector with opportunities for cooperation in the area of Technology innovation. This will help to develop low carbon pathways for industry.
In order to make our infrastructure disaster resilient, India is launching a Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. I invite Member states to join this coalition.
This year on the occasion of India’s Independence day on 15th August, we called for a peoples movement to end the use of single use plastic. I hope that this will create an awareness at a global level about the harmful effects of single use plastic.
Excellencies, I am happy to announce that tomorrow we are going to inaugurate solar panels on the roof of the UN building, funded by India at a cost of 1 million dollars.
The time for talking is over; the world needs to act now. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Source: Press Information Bureau, Government of India

The Indiaclimate Rainfall Index 2019

by Leave a Comment

We have compiled the Indiaclimate District Rainfall Adequacy Index for the monsoon season of 2019. As with our previous editions of the index series, this one for the 2019 monsoon applies our innovation to the communicating of the weekly changes in rainfall adequacy as recorded by the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

The graph (or visualisation as any such illustration is called nowadays, a word that makes the simple graph or chart sound sophisticated, but which usually complicates matters instead of simplifying them) is easy enough to read and interpret. What you have is several vertical bars, each corresponding to dates a week apart. The bars are made up of coloured segments – there are 11 coloured segments and one grey segment, a total of 12 segments.

Each of the 11 colours represents the number of districts whose rainfall readings for a week (the week till the date given) fall within the parameters given in the accompanying legend. There are three groups of colours: three segments in the ‘normal’ ranges, four segments in the ‘excess’ ranges and four segments in the ‘deficient’ ranges. Grey represents no data for that week.

The gradation of the segments is based on, but is not a copy of, the grades used by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) indicators for precipitation. The numbers that we use are from the IMD’s Hydrometeorology Division, which releases its ‘rainfall departures’ table every week. We take these numbers, reprocess them and redistribute them across the 11 grades.

It is a much more readily readable graph and provides for quick interpretation. The grades are finer than the six used by the IMD: normal (+19% to -195), excess (+20% to +59%), large excess (+60% or more), deficient (-20% to -59%), large deficient (-60% to -99%), no rain (-100%).

Our index, in which most segments are of 20 percentage points, is designed for local administrations – in districts but also municipal bodies – to take their cues from weekly signals and prepare if need be for a drought-like situation with water shortages or a flood-like situation with inundation.

How does it work in practice? Let’s look at the district of Guna, in Madhya Pradesh, in the meteorological sub-division of Western MP. The first two monsoon weeks, ending 5 June and 12 June, Guna received no rain (that is, -100% of the rainfall it normally receives in those weeks) and that corresponds to the D4 indicator. The next week, ending 19 June, it received -29% which is D1, the fourth week (26 June) it slipped back to -72% which is D3, the following week (3 July) it improved to -32% which is again D1 and in the sixth week (10 July) Guna received +34% which took it into the E1 grade.

Normally, a district that has received no rainfall or neglible rainfall for six weeks becomes a candidate for a drought-like condition – water sources after the long and hot summer have dried up and crops become parched. If such conditions continue for another two weeks, the state administration must roll out relief measures.

In our example, for the five weeks until the week of 3 July Guna had two D4s, one D3 and two D1s before coming out of the D grades. Our index gives the district (or town) administration the means with which to set their own triggers for action. If the water sources in the district were still at 10%-15% of their water holding capacities by the week of 3 July, then they could consult the medium term forecasts to gauge whether likely rainfall will be enough to hold off relief action. If not, and stored water slipped under 10% with uncertain forecasts, they could ask for relief and issue appropriate crop advisories.

Our index graph – the stacked and segmented bar chart I am sorely tempted to call a ‘signature’ – is a representation of the numbers in the rainweeks table we compile. This table has 684 components which are the districts, each of which has a rainfall reading for the week given (in millimetres) and a rainfall departure (in %). The graph is a set of stacked bars for each week, with each segment sized according to the number of districts in the grade that the segment corresponds to.

What does the index graph for six weeks tell us? The first two monsoon weeks were alarming, with 342 and then 356 districts in the D4 grade. The situation has slowly improved thereafter, with the latest week, that of 10 July, being the best so far – it has 80 districts in the N1 grade. That last week also has for the first time in monsoon 2019 more E grade districts than D grade districts. What needs to be looked out for is districts that have been in the D4 and D3 grades for four and more weeks and whose recovery is patchy. That monitoring becomes much easier with the Indiaclimate District Rainfall Adequacy Index.

Rahul Goswami

Late, but on the way

by Leave a Comment

At this point, the monsoon 2019 system is farther away, in terms of its movement, than where it is normally found at this time of the year. The India Meteorological Department maintains its maps showing the movement of the system through late May and early June.

Judged against its averaged movement over the last decade and over a 50-year long-term average, the northern limit of the system is some 450 kilometres away from where it usually is in the south-west Bay of Bengal, and is about 400 kilometres away from the more easterly end of the same perimeter in the east-central Bay of Bengal. Whereas around 27 May the monsoon system would have normally been some 150 kilometres north of the Andaman Islands, now it is at 11N (near Little Andaman).

This delay has no bearing on the forecast for the overall adequacy of rainfall during monsoon 2019 because, as the IMD has said, the large-scale features which influence our monsoon are favourable, these being:
* Weak El Niño conditions that are prevailing over the equatorial Pacific Ocean; the latest Monsoon Mission Climate Forecasting System (MMCFS) forecast indicates that these conditions are likely to continue during the monsoon season but with reduced intensity.
* Neutral Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) conditions over the Indian Ocean; the latest MMCFS forecast indicates these conditions are likely to continue during the monsoon season.

The weekly outlooks are as follows.
The week 24 May to 30 May: the south-west monsoon cloud cover belt moves into sea regions – the south-east Arabian Sea, the south-west and south-east Bay of Bengal, and the north Andaman Sea. Showers in the entire north-eastern region with heavier daily rain (5-10 mm/day) in Manipur, Nagaland and Assam hills. Light showers in Karnataka, Kerala, adjacent Tamil Nadu and Rayalaseema.

The week 31 May to 06 Jun: the south-west monsoon cloud cover belt does not advance further into the Arabian Sea while it moves further north into the east-central Bay of Bengal. The north-east region continues to have showers as the eastern Himalayan region is fully covered. Lower Assam and Meghalaya to have heavier showers of up to 20 mm/day. The spread of light showers in Tamil Nadu is wider as the north Lankan gap between the cloud fronts over the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal closes, light showers (up to 5 mm/day) continue in Kerala and south interior Karnataka.

The week 07 Jun to 13 Jun: the main feature is the advance of the south-west monsoon cloud cover belt into the east-central Arabian Sea (off the central Konkan coast). With the limits of the south-west monsoon cloud cover belt remaining as they were over the Bay of Bengal, light showers extend over Tamil Nadu, south interior and coastal Karnataka, Goa and the Maharashtra Konkan with heavier showers (5-10 mm/day in Kerala). All states of the north-east continues to receive heavier showers (10-20 mm/day) and the western Himalaya – all divisions of Jammu & Kashmir, the northern halves of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand – receive light showers.

The week 14 Jun to 20 Jun: consolidation of the south-west monsoon cloud cover belt over the seas with the east-central and north-east Arabian Sea fully reached, the north-east Bay of Bengal likewise, and its north-west entered. This brings heavier daily rain (up to 20 mm/day to all states of the north-east and light showers to West Bengal, parts of Bihar, Jharkhand, parts of Odisha. The entire west coast has rain with the northern precipitation line from Thane (20N) to Latur (18N), to Warangal (18N) and Kondagaon (in Chhattisgarh, 20N), to Rayagada (in Odisha, 19N). Light showers also in the western Himalayan region (up to 5 mm/day).

Misreading monsoon

by 1 Comment

As usual in May, there is a welter of forecasts and opinions about the monsoon, the great majority of which are short on understanding and shorter on elementary science. The media – newspapers, television news channels, their websites – are to blame for spreading half-baked forecasts and wild prognoses. Not one of the numerous newspapers and TV channels, whatever the language they employ, bother to provide their reporters a basic grounding in the climatological system that gives us our monsoon.

In the first place, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) issues an operational forecast for the south-west monsoon season (June to September) rainfall for the country as a whole in two stages. The first stage forecast is issued in April and the second stage forecast is issued in June. These forecasts are prepared using state-of-the-art Statistical Ensemble Forecasting system (SEFS) and using the dynamical coupled Ocean-Atmosphere global Climate Forecasting System (CFS) model developed under Monsoon Mission of the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

On 15 April 2019 the IMD issued its first stage forecast. Based on our own in-field observations from the west coast, from the patterns of maximum termperature bands and variations in the lower and central peninsular region, from the sea surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea particular its southerly reaches and ditto for the Bay of Bengal, and from the wind patterns that can be experienced at various places in the peninsula and on the west coast, we find the IMD first stage forecast to be reliable.

It is the chronically ignorant media – which over the last few years has displayed a tendency to prefer some so-called private sector weather forecasters instead of what the Ministry of Earth Sciences provides – found irresponsibly claiming that the monsoon of 2019 will be ‘deficient’ and will also begin ‘late’. Neither of these terms is sensible in any way, and we take no satisfaction in noting that only a media that is insensible to planetary and mesoscale events like climate, will employ such insensible terms in reporting that is meant to educate and benefit the public.

IMD’s April forecast used the following five predictors: 1. the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Gradient between North Atlantic and North Pacific (in December and January), 2. the Equatorial South Indian Ocean SST (in February), 3. the East Asia Mean Sea Level Pressure (in February and March), 4. North-west Europe Land Surface Air Temperature (in January), and 5. Equatorial Pacific Warm Water Volume (in February and March).

There are two forecasts the IMD makes. One is based on the Monsoon Mission CFS Model, which considers global atmospheric and oceanic initial conditions up to March 2019 and use 47 ensemble members (or kinds of data). The forecast based on the CFS model suggests that the monsoon rainfall during the 2019 monsoon season (June to September) averaged over the country as a whole is likely to be 94% ± 5% of the Long Period Average (LPA).

The second is the forecast based on the operational Statistical Ensemble Forecasting system (SEFS). This shows that quantitatively, the monsoon seasonal rainfall is likely to be 96% of the Long Period Average (LPA) with a model error of ± 5%. The SEFS comprises five category probability forecasts for the June to September rainfall over the country as a whole:

Overall therefore the IMD forecast is for the 2019 monsoon rainfall to be near normal. The IMD has already pointed out (which can be seen from the probabilities of the categories given in the table) that there is only a small chance for the monsoon rainfall to be above normal or excess. In view of the weather events and the climatological changes that we are seeing from day to day in May, ascribing a ‘lateness’ to the monsoon is absurd. Monsoon conditions already exist in and over the Indian land mass and in and over the great watery zones extending southwards from latitude 8 degrees North – and that is why we will find rain-bearing clouds crossing the south-western coastline in the first week of June 2019.

Rahul Goswami

‘Fani’ aims for Odisha, AP

by Leave a Comment

Update: Cyclone Fani will make landfall on the coast on 3 May. Depending on whether the Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm (IMD’s classification) gains more speed over the Bay of Bengal, Fani could cross the coast as early as 1000 hours on 3 May.

Based on the weather charts released by IMD and corroborated by the climatological forecasts produced by the World Meteorological Organisation’s members, Fani will cross the coast between Kakinada, East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, and Puri, district Puri, Odisha, which is about 60 km south of Bhubaneshwar.

Previously: The India Meteorological Department has issued a forcast for and warning about a cyclonic storm which as of today (27 Apri) is a low pressure area lying over the East Equatorial Indian Ocean and adjoining south-east Bay of Bengal.

It is already intensifying into a depression over the East Equatorial Indian Ocean and adjoining central parts of the southern Bay of Bengal and will further intensify into a cyclonic storm. Thereafter the storm is forecast to move north-westwards along and off the east coast of Sri Lanka near the north Tamil Nadu coast on 30 April.

The IMD has already issued warning to fishermen about strong winds. Wind speed reaching 45-55 kmph gusting to 65 kmph over East Equatorial Indian Ocean and adjoining central parts of the southern Bay of Bengal are already being recorded. Gale wind speeds will be reached of 65-75 kmph gusting to 85 kmph over the south-west Bay of Bengal and adjoining Equatorial Indian Ocean by 27 April.

Thereafter 80-90 kmph gusting to 100 kmph over the south-west Bay of Bengal and adjoining Equatorial Indian Ocean and along and off the Sri Lankan coast on 28 April and 90-100 kmph gusting to 115 kmph over the south-west Bay of Bengal, along and off the Sri Lankan coast and off the Tamil Nadu and Puducherry coast on 29 April. The sea condition will be very rough in all these areas.

There will be light to moderate rainfall at many places with heavy rainfalls at isolated places in north coastal Tamil Nadu on 30 April and 1 May and over Kerala on 29 and 30 April. Light to moderate rainfall at many places with heavy rainfall at isolated places is also very likely over south coastal Andhra  Pradesh on these dates.

Forecast updates are available here.