rainfall Archives - The India Climate Observatory

The Indiaclimate Rainfall Index 2019

July 15, 2019 by Climate portal editor 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

Misreading monsoon

May 16, 2019 by Climate portal editor 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

A mixed report for the monsoon so far

August 6, 2018 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

The India Meteorological Department in its ‘Long Range Forecast for the Rainfall during Second Half (August –September) of the Southwest Monsoon 2018’ has said:
(a) The rainfall during August 2018 is likely to be 96 ± 9% of LPA and expected to be higher than was predicted in June.
(b) Quantitatively, the rainfall for the country as a whole during the second half of the season (August and September) is likely to be 95% of LPA with a model error of ±8%.
(c) The tercile probability forecasts for the rainfall over the country as a whole during the 2018 second half of the monsoon season are: 47% forecast probability that it will be less than 94% of the LPA (below normal), 41% forecast probability that it will be between 94% and 106% of the LPA (normal), and only 12% forecast probability that it will be over 106% of the LPA (above normal).
The Department said that “distribution of rainfall is very good over all parts of the country except Bihar, Jharkhand and NE States. Such a scenario of favourable distribution of rainfall is expected to continue during rest of monsoon season of 2018 so as to remain favourable for agricultural operations”.

The IMD in its latest weekly ‘performance sheet’ on rainfall has calculated the cumulative rainfall up to 1 August 2018 on an ‘area weighted’ basis as being 431 mm as compared with a normal of 462 mm. But this is a measure that doesn’t tell us anything local and we have advised the IMD to abandon it. What is more useful is the enumerating of subdivisions according to cumulatie rainfall: by 1 August, there were 28 which had normal rainfall, 7 which had deficient, and one which had excess. For this period – monsoon rainfall until 1 August – this year has had the most number of subdivisions with normal rainfall in the last five years.

However it is a concern that five of the seven subdivisions which up to 1 August 2018 have had deficient rainfall are in the East and North-East India region and they are: Arunachal Pradesh (-36%), Assam and Meghalaya (-33%), NMMT which is Nagaland Manipur Mizoram Tripura (-25%), Jharkhand (-24%) and Bihar (-22%). The other two subdivisions with deficits are Rayalaseema (-41%) and Lakshadweep (-43%).

In states, Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of districts (26) registering deficient rainfall up to 1 August 2018, even though 25 of the state’s districts have had normal rainfall for the period and 18 have had excess or large excess. Bihar has 24 districts which have registered deficient rainfall for this period, followed by Jharkhand (15), Assam (14), and Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka each with 13.

Vidarbha’s monsoon secret comes out in our innovative new rainfall index

August 18, 2017 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Monsoon rains in Vidarbha better than the rains in Konkan Maharashtra? How can this be possible? Especially when the average rainfall for the seven districts of Konkan Maharashtra, over 1 June to 9 August, is 1,812 mm and the average rainfall for the 11 districts of Vidarbha Maharashtra is 427 mm over the same period?

The measure that we are piloting is not based on the cumulative totals, for each district during each week of monsoon 2017, but for how adequate the rainfall has been over each week. What does that mean? Maharashtra’s Konkan region receives over four times the amount of rainfall that Vidarbha does. This does not mean that Vidarbha is more ‘rain poor’ than Konkan Maharashtra. The two meteorological regions are different just as their agro-ecologies, soils, water retention structures and flora are different.

Because of this difference, it is more useful to us to judge how adequate rainfall has been over any given period of measurement. We have taken a week because that is what we have data for, as provided by the Department of Hydrometeorology or the Department of Agricultural Meteorology of the India Meteorological Department, Ministry of Earth Sciences.

If you examine the cumulative totals – this means the running totals which from one week to the next carry over extras or deficits – the picture is as follows. One district only (Mumbai City) of the seven in Konkan Maharashtra is deficit (with -22%), all the rest being ‘normal’ in the range of -19% to +22%. The cumulative measurement picture for Vidarbha is this: only four out of the 11 districts (Buldana, Gadchiroli, Nagpur and Wardha) are ‘normal’ and in the range of -15% to -19%. The remaining seven are ‘deficit’ in the range of -23% to -36% (Amravati and Yavatmal being the lowest).

The weakness of the cumulative measure is that it ‘carries forward’ deficits and surpluses. A deficit in weeks 3 and 4 can be ‘made up’ for by better rains in week 5 and 6. But when rain in weeks 3 and 4 are important for a particular phase of a crop’s growth, the surplus that follows is of little use.

That’s where this pilot measure, what I have called the ‘rainfall adequacy index’, comes in. It indexes normalcy and variation from normalcy, plus or minus, and so records how adequate every week has been for the district. Using this method, we find that among Maharashtra’s meteorological regions, it is Vidarbha that has done best over 1 June to 9 August, followed by Konkan Maharashtra, then by Madhya Maharashtra and with Marathwada last.

The footnote is that the three districts with the best ‘rainfall adequacy index’ over this period are, in order, Sindhudurg, Nagpur and Wardha. The three districts with the worst index are Osmanabad, Nashik and both Thane and Palghar.

– Rahul Goswami

Rain, climate, agriculture and Haryana

May 4, 2015 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Every one of Haryana’s 21 districts received excess rain for the period 1 March to 30 April 2015. As these rains have destroyed crops, including food staples, the need to compensate the affected farming families is now paramount. Relief and support are only useful when they are arrive quickly, and unlike administrative conditions two generations ago, state governments and district collectors today can consult data around the clock about conditions in districts and blocks.

Our infographic shows why the March and April rains in Haryana have had destructive effects. The average rainfall in a district of Haryana during this two-month period was 111.6 millimetres – most were in the range of 148 mm (like Ambala) and 81 mm (like Mahendragarh). However, the average for the two months, March and April, is 21.2 mm (Panipat and Faridabad are usually closest to this average).

Although the level of detail available at the district, and indeed even at the weather station level, is comprehensive, the Indian Meteorological Department’s rainfall quantity categories are not granular enough to describe what Haryana has experienced. (This is so for every state that has recorded what is called “unseasonal rain” in these months.)

Amongst the questions that remain unanswered concerning the ‘unseasonal rains’ phenomena – common to Haryana, eastern and western Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradash, Rajasthan and Gujarat – is the matter of how much rain becomes excess over how many days? This meteorological sub-division (Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi) normally receives 165 mm in July and 173 mm in August. Therefore, an average amount of 111.6 mm over two months is not a quantity that has surprised the agricultural community.

The matter is one of timing – which lapse the state administration needs to explain, as the weather forecasters first alert state administrations, which then relay alerts and advisories to district administrative staff. Between the claims for compensation for destroyed crops and the political point-scoring, the state government of Haryana has side-stepped the question: what did it do with the weather advisories it was given in March and April 2015?

For our series on the changing rainfall and climate patterns (the Haryana map is the first), we use six categories that begin with 10% above normal and extend to 1000% above normal. This method does better at identifying districts in which agriculture has been hit harder by unseasonal rains and stormy weather.

Dry tale of ten rain weeks

August 23, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

What a monsoon season is can no longer be judged by the over-simplified sums that assure the country about departures from an ‘average’ and the potential of ‘catching up’ as a season progresses. Since the 2009 drought, the awareness of farmers’ cooperatives and groups about the meteorological products and data available with the only provider of such measurements has grown. What has not grown is the willingness of government agencies on the one hand, and the consuming public on the other, to make similar investments in pursuing such clarity.

The area chart with its jagged stripes is the simplest indicator of the gap between the central government’s sanguine response to a very serious monsoon deficit, and the conditions that our districts have recorded since the first week of June 2014. The chart, based on the Indian Meteorological Department’s weekly district recordings of rainfall, plots 641 of these readings over ten weeks.

Our modified monsoon measure shows the overall trend, and made the case early for state and district level relief.

It is immediately clear that the green stripe (for ‘normal’) has at no point been significantly larger than any one of the other three important stripes, coloured deep red (for ‘scanty’), peach (for ‘deficient’) and blue (for ‘excess’).

In the seventh week of monsoon 2014 (17 to 23 July 2014) the number of districts that recorded normal rainfall for that week was 126, and that is the maximum number that have reported normal rainfall for a week. The next highest number of districts reporting normal for a week is 92, which was for the preceding week (10 to 16 July 2014).

More serious is the district-level reporting for the following three weeks – ending 30 July, 06 August and 13 August – which show the number of districts that reported normal rain for each week was less than 20% of the number of districts that reported deficient, scanty or excess rainfall. It was during this period that central government ministries and agencies did not publicly disclose the widespread monsoon deficiency and which did not act, by alerting the consuming public, to the short and medium term consequences of the monsoon crisis.

The modified monsoon measure (which has been advocated as a method to prime local administrations towards early recognition of the need for relief and remedial action in drought and drought-like conditions) displays to greater effect the glaring imbalance between ‘normals’ and their absence in the districts. In every one of the ten weeks, the light red bar (the ‘deficient 2’ measure, for rainfall of 21% less and lower) dominates.

Otherwise it is the dark blue bar (the ‘excess 2’ measure, for rainfall of 21% more and above) which is next most prominent. This is the clearest signal from a close reading of the district rainfall reportage that volatility in rainfall quantities is the feature most visible throughout monsoon 2014.

The IMD’s running table of the distict rainfall departures confirms this trend for monsoon 2014. In many of the 36 meteorological sub-divisions, weeks of scanty and deficient rainfall are broken by normal or excess rainfall, only to return to scanty and deficient. Taking the districts of Odisha and of western Madhya Pradesh as examples, this volatility can be seen at a glance, and is in concurrence with the overall trends that the modified monsoon measure has been indicating for the last two months.

The IMD’s shaky monsoon math

August 7, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

Over eight weeks of recorded monsoon rain, the district-level data available with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) portrays a picture that is very different from its ‘national’ and ‘regional’ advice about the strength and consistency of rainfall.

In its first weekly briefing on the monsoon of August 2014, IMD said: “For the country as a whole, cumulative rainfall during this year’s monsoon (01 June to 30 July 2014) has so far upto 30 July been 23% below the Long Period Average.” Out of 36 meteorological sub-divisions, said the IMD, the rainfall has been normal over 15 and deficient over 21 sub-divisions.

Readings for each district that has reported rainfall consistently for eight weeks. The columns represent the percentage value of actual rainfall for each district against their normal rainfall for eight weeks.

However, we have compiled a far more realistic reading of the monsoon season so far, from the IMD’s own data. For the 614 individual readings from districts that have regular rainfall readings, we have the following: 86 districts have registered scanty rainfall (-99% to -60%); 281 districts have registered deficient rainfall (-59% to -20%); 200 districts have registered normal rainfall (-19% to +19%); and 47 districts have registered excess rainfall (+20% and more).

Moreover, using our running weekly district-level monsoon meter – the details of which and the reasoning for which you will find in here – we see that there was a substantial dip in the number of districts registering ‘deficient 2’ rainfall, which is less than 21% of the normal and lower, during the seventh week of rain, that is the week of 17 to 23 July. But the general trend returned the following week, 24 to 30 July.

What this means, and the bar chart we have provided to illustrate the 614 individual values leaves us in no doubt, is that 367 out of 614 districts have had meagre rain for eight weeks. This also means that over eight weeks where there should have been rainfall that – as the IMD predicted in early June – would be around 95% of the ‘long period average’, instead three out of five districts have had less than 80% of their usual quota.

Our running weekly district-level monsoon meter to aid governance decisions shows the overall trend has not changed substantially in the last fortnight despite good rains during the seventh monsoon week.

Unfortunately, the press and media – in particular the business and financial media – persist in reporting ‘national’ deficits and whether monsoon 2014 will ‘make up’ the average in the remaining period. This approach must be corrected by the IMD’s departmental divisions as it incorrectly makes popular the notion that total rainfall over a designated number of weeks is the most important monsoon metric (See ‘Why there is no ‘normal’ in our monsoon’). Of course it is not so, as different crops follow their own crop calendars according to the agro-ecological regions they are grown in, and require optimum rain at certain times during their respective crop calendars.

The following examples show why such reporting can be misleading:

From Reuters: “August rains hold the key to India’s major summer crops such as rice, soybean, cane and cotton, after a wet end to July failed to make up fully for a dry start to the four-month monsoon season. A late revival shrank the shortfall in rain to around 10 percent below average in July, the India Meteorological Department’s update showed on Thursday, a sharp improvement from the 43 percent deficit in the first month of the season.”

From Bloomberg: “Monsoon crops are sown from June and harvested from October. The country had less than 40 percent of average rains in the first six weeks of the monsoon season that runs through September. The shortage shrank to 23 percent by end-July. Oilseed planting in India is poised to slump as much as 24 percent to the lowest since 2002 after a weak start to the monsoon.”

From The Hindu: “With the country receiving good rain in July, monsoon deficiency has gone down to 23 percent, the MET department on Friday said. While the monsoon deficiency at the national level in June was 43 per cent, by July end it has come down to 23 per cent. Central India, which saw little rain in June, has by now seen some good rain. It received 402.2 mm of rainfall as compared to expected rainfall of 477.7 mm with a deficiency of 16 per cent, much lesser compared to other parts of the country.”

From Business Standard: “According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the rains managed to recoup much of the June losses due to strong revival over the central and western regions, and parts of northern India. Weather officials said the momentum of July would continue till about August 10 and then slacken a bit.”

From Mint: “India’s July rain deficit narrowed to 10% of the long-term average for the month, marking a recovery from the driest June in five years, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said, as kharif crop sowing picked up in tandem. The shrinking of the rainfall deficit in July comes at a time when policymakers have been concerned about the impact of a below-average monsoon on foodgrain production and inflation. The June-September monsoon accounts for more than 70% of the annual rainfall in India and irrigates crops grown on half the country’s farmlands.”

Seeing the local in six rain weeks

July 23, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

RG_ICP_20140723_pic We urge the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the India Meteorology Department and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to cease the use of a ‘national’ rainfall average to describe the progress of monsoon 2014. This is a measure that has no meaning for cultivators in any of our agro-ecological zones, and has no meaning for any individual taluka or tehsil in the 36 meteorological sub-divisions. What we need to see urgently adopted is a realistic overview that numerically and graphically explains the situation, at as granular a level as possible.

Using a revised categorisation of rainfall sufficiency levels (the method and the reasoning is available here) we find that for the fifth and sixth weeks of monsoon, there has been a small improvement which does not lower the high likelihood of drought conditions becoming prevalent in districts and scarcity of water for our settlements. The full-size chart is available here as an image, and explains in detail the rainfall that districts are reporting.

The fifth monsoon week is 03 to 09 July 2014 and the sixth monsoon week is 10 to 16 July 2014. There has been a small addition to the revised normal rainfall category (-5% to +5%), rising from 18 districts recording normal rainfall in the 4th week to 22 in the 5th and 28 in the 6th. There has also been an improvement in the number of districts recording deficit-2 levels of rainfall (-21% and more) with 437 in the 4th week, 411 in the 5th week and 385 in the 6th week. For the remainder of July the likelihood of more rainfall in the districts that have recorded normal or excess-1 (+6% to +20%) is small, according to the available forecasts, and this means that monsoon 2014 will begin August with far fewer districts registering normal rainfall than they should at this stage.

Gauging four weeks of rain in the districts

July 8, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

We now have rain data for four complete weeks from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and for all the districts that have reported the progress of the monsoon. The overall picture is even more serious than reported earlier because of the falling levels of water in the country’s major reservoirs. [05 to 11 June is the first week. 12 to 18 June is the second week. 19 to 25 June is the third week. 26 June to 02 July is the fourth week.]

Using the new measure of assessing the adequacy of district rainfall (and not the meteorological gradations that is the IMD standard), in the fourth week of the monsoon the number of districts that reported normal rains in that week (+5% to -5%) is 16; deficient 1 (-6% to -20%) is 31; deficient 2 (-21% and more) is 437; excess 1 (+6% to +20%) is 17; excess 2 (+21% and more) is 113; no data was reported from 25.

Why there is no ‘normal’ in our monsoon

July 4, 2014 by Climate portal editor Leave a Comment

The idea of a ‘revival’ of a delayed and weakened monsoon is a misleading one and the country’s earth science agencies must advise against the term being used. In particular, our news media must cease using this term as it implies, incorrectly, that rainfall can be ‘made up’ even though current ‘averages’ are low.

This group of maps of the 2014 monsoon is in three parts. Each part is composed of four separate but linked maps, two each in two rows.
This is how you read each of the three sets: the top left map in a group of four shows the anomaly (in millimetres) of rainfall for the days measured. In this map, ochre yellow and dark browns are regions with the least rain compared to what they should have received, while those shaded in blues have received more than they normally do. The second map, top right, shows the percent of normal rain – light and dark browns being percentages very much lower than normal and greens and blues above.
The lower left map in each group shows the accumulated rainfall for the measured days in millimetres, with green then blue and then orange showing the increasing levels of accumulated rain. In contrast, the lower right map shows the normal cumulative rainfalls for the same period.
As with the group of four maps for the seven day period, the groups for the ten and 30 day rainfall measurement cycles follow the same pattern. In this panel, the seven day period is 26 June to 02 July 2014, the ten day period is 23 June to 02 July 2014 and the 30 day period is 03 June to 02 July 2014.
The maps are by the Climate Prediction Center, NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, USA.

This is simply not so. A normal monsoon is certainly not one that can statistically be called ‘normal’ on the basis of cumulative rainfall for a region – such as any one of our 36 meteorological sub-divisions – adding up to what is expected over four weeks after a few heavy showers in the last few days have helped tilt the reading from ‘below normal’ to ‘normal’. The three panels of maps alongside convincingly explain why.

Yet senior meteorological department officials, including those at the National Weather Forecasting Centre at the India Meteorological Department, issue statements such as “the monsoon has revived in many parts of central and north India”. This may be meant to assuage the concerns especially of farming and cultivating households, but in fact they only distract from the recognition a continuing climatological crisis urgently needs.

The evidence till now is extremely worrisome. June’s rainfall was 43% below average (a ‘national’ statistic that has no meaning in a district, but which helps in a small way to describe the degree of dryness) and this makes June 2014 the worst first month for recorded rainfall since 2009, a year in which the monsoon was the worst after the dreadful dry of 1972.

Especially given the growing evidence of the effects of climate change in India – from rising sea levels, to increasing meltwater from Himalayan glaciers causing torrents in hilly and mountainous districts, to rising mean temperatures in peninsular and north India – there is reason enough to set aside the usual measures such as the date of what is called ‘the onset of the rains over Kerala’ which is pegged to 01 June, and then a progress of the rain up the peninsula based on patterns of 40, 50 and more years ago. These time-tables no longer stand. [A full resolution set of the maps used here is available as a zip archive (2.68 MB).]

What continues to stand in the food staples calendar is the sowing that takes place in July and August but although there is more cooperation between the official earth sciences agencies and the Ministry of Agriculture, the central government has continues to link, in recent statements, the rising prices of food staples to the probability that these will continue should the monsoon be inadequate – which is what all the indicators are pointing to at this time.

This insistence is a contradiction, for a late and weak monsoon (or even an uneven and heavy monsoon that is statistically ‘normal’) will not help the usual sowing time-table and that is why agricultural contingency plans for every district are readied at the first indication of a wayward monsoon. The role of the central and state governments at times like these is not to blame poor rains for volatile and rising food prices but to help determine crop time-tables that match the circumstances.

By Rahul Goswami