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A third dry week of monsoon 2014

June 28, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

05 to 11 June is the first week. 12 to 18 June is the second week. 19 to 25 June is the third week. The bars represent the weeks and are divided by IMD’s rainfall categories, with the length of each category in a bar showing the proportion of that category’s number of districts. The colours used here match those used in IMD’s weekly rainfall map (below) which displays the category-wise rainfall in the 36 meteorological sub-divisions (but not by district).

The IMD weekly rainfall map for 19 to 25 June.

We now have rain data for three complete weeks from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and for all the districts that have reported the progress of the monsoon.

The overall picture remains grim. In the third week of the monsoon the number of districts that reported normal rains in that week (-19% to +19% of the average) is only 74. No rain (-100%) was reported by 71 districts Scanty rain (-99% to -60%) was reported by 221 districts, deficient rain (-59% to -20%) was reported by 125 districts, excess rain (+20% and more) was reported by 129 districts, and there was no data from 21 districts.

The Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, of the Ministry of Agriculture, has already issued its guidance to states on the contingency plans to be followed for a delayed monsoon. That is why it is important to make available the district-level normals and rainfall departures – the meteorological sub-divisions are too broad for such analysis and are irrelevant to any contingency plans and remedial work.

By end-June, when the IMD updates its outlook for the rest of monsoon 2014, we expect more detailed assessments of the districts to be publicly available – the agromet (agricultural meteorology section) already provides this to the states, with state agriculture departments given the responsibility of ensuring that the advice – which is especially important for farmers to plan the sowing of crop staples – reaches every panchayat.

Emissions, deserts and economics

June 17, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Desertification in Namibia. Photo: UNEP/A.Gloor/Namibia

Marking the World Day to Combat Desertification and referring directly to climate change, India today said developing countries like it have “a right to grow” and in the process “our net emission may increase”. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar made the point that the problem of carbon emission “has not been created by the developing nations and hence responsibility for addressing it should not be solely put on them”.

Javadekar said India does have to reduce carbon emissions but also said that the country has “a right to grow”. He said that poverty is an “environmental disaster” and “unless we tackle poverty, unless we eradicate poverty, we cannot really address the climate change”. The eradication of poverty in India, said the minister, will require India to grow economically and in so doing “our net emission may increase”.

Meanwhile, United Nations officials today emphasised the importance of restoring degrading lands to avoid or soften the potentially disastrous impacts of climate change. The UN mentioned studies which show that 24 billion tons of fertile soil are being eroded each year, and 2 billion hectares of degraded land have potential for recovery and restoration. Furthermore, land degradation is not only a problem in the world’s drylands. Most of the deterioration is happening in humid areas.

With the ongoing impact of global climate change, we will continue to witness extreme weather events, which will in turn lead to even more land degradation. The UN statement on the World Day to Combat Desertification said a commitment to achieving a land-degradation neutral world must be realised through common targets and clear indicators of success.

Javadekar has said that India will become “desertification neutral” by 2030, and added that 32% of India’s total land is facing the threat of desertification. “In India, 69% of the land is dryland, and 32% of the land is undergoing desertification,” he said. According to the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, the land area facing desertification is 81 million hectares, while 105 million hectares are dryland. “It is a serious threat and has to be stopped and reversed,” he said. Javadekar said an integrated plan will be launched with the agriculture, land resources and water ministries to address the problem.

The World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD) is 17 June4. As a signatory to United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which focuses on desertification, land degradation and drought, India promotes public awareness of the issue, and mobilises international cooperation for the implementation of the UNCCD. The theme of this year’s WDCD is ecosystem-based adaptation with the slogan ‘Land Belongs to the Future, Let’s Climate Proof It’. The 2014 WDCD highlights the benefits of mainstreaming sustainable land management policies and practices into our collective response to climate change.

ENSO, ISMR, EQUINOO and rain

June 5, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

An editorial in the journal Current Science (25 May 2014) has helpfully linked three phenomena that will affect the monsoon of 2014. The first is the El Niño (and the El Niño Southern Oscillation or ENSO) over the Pacific Ocean, considered unfavourable for us and the monsoon. The editorial has pointed out that El Niño has featured in the news already, with likely impacts being considered such as “a decrease of about 1.75% of GDP”. The question the editorial asks is: how reliable is the forecast of an impending El Niño? When it does occur, will it bring a deficit monsoon or a drought inevitably?

The second phenomenon is the Indian summer monsoon rainfall (abbreviated to ISMR by those who study climate for the sub-continent). The Current Science editorial makes an important point which is, studying the relationship between the sufficiency of the monsoon, the GDP and food-grain production during 1950–2004 reveals that the magnitude of the adverse impact of deficit rainfall is much larger than the magnitude of the positive impact of above average rainfall. This means that India being able to predict the possibility of drought (and therefore factors that influence it such as the ENSO) is more important than being able to predict a good monsoon.

The editorial has said that the ISMR “is significantly correlated with this ENSO index, with the relationship explaining 29% of the variance of monsoon rainfall”. Thus the warm phase of ENSO, which is characterised by more rainfall over the equatorial central Pacific, is associated with a decrease in rainfall over India. Now that we know this, what are the implications for monsoon 2014? By April, the warm phase of ENSO has already commenced with enhanced convection/rainfall over the central Pacific and all the models predict that it will amplify and persist until the end of the summer monsoon (the models vary in how they look at linked phenomena and the specific conclusions but agree broadly that El Niño conditions are here.

While the editorial has said that by “mid-June we should get a better idea of whether an El Niño is imminent”, the already unfavourable ENSO conditions mean that the probability of drought has gone up to just over 30%. If an El Niño does fully develop by end-June, the chance of a drought increases to 70%.

The explanation becomes more complete with the assessment of the third phenomenon. This is the Equatorial Indian Ocean Oscillation (EQUINOO). In 2003, it was discovered that in addition to ENSO, EQUINOO plays an important role in the variations, from one year to the next, of the ISMR. There is what is called “a see-saw between a state with enhanced rainfall over western equatorial Indian Ocean and suppressed rainfall over eastern equatorial Indian Ocean” (and its opposite). How this becomes manifest from one year to the next is considered by climatologists to account for about 19% of the variance of the monsoon rainfall.

The equation that we will have to finish writing and balance in the next few weeks is this. During the Indian summer monsoon season, ENSO and EQUINOO are poorly correlated – an ENSO unfavourable to us can be counter-balanced to some degree by a favourable EQUINDO. When both are unfavourable to us, drought has occurred. But the records also show that twice recently, in 1963 and in 1997, a favourable EQUINDO has protected us from the harmful impact of an El Niño. We need, in short, to be watching closely multiple large climatic phenomena every day until at least end-June. Is the IMD up to the job?