Praying for rain: Drought fears sparked by El Nino threat as monsoon fails to hit Kerala on time


India's life-giving season of rain has already missed its scheduled June 1 date with Kerala, and there's a one-in-four chance that the delay could turn into a full-on drought.

It is said that the mechanism of the Indian monsoon is understood by every schoolboy but the experts don't have a watertight theory yet.

Add to that the not-so-well understood El Nino phenomenon - an upwelling of warm water in the eastern Pacific that has a far-reaching effect on regional weather patterns across the globe - and the picture starts drying up for India.

Drought fears: The India Meteorological Department previously predicted below-normal rainfall this year, with monsoon rainfall likely to be 95 per cent of normal (with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 per cent)

A bad year could be around the corner, and all we have to fall back on is probability, not definitive meteorology.

The facts: El Nino-which means Little Christ because of the usual Christmas time upwelling of warm water off the coasts of Spanish-speaking South American nations - has a 60 percent probability of occurring this year.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on April 24 predicted below-normal rainfall this year, with monsoon rainfall likely to be 95 per cent of normal (with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 per cent).

Another second-stage forecast will be issued by IMD later this month. The first IMD forecast puts the chances of both a normal and a below-normal monsoon at roughly one in three, but speaks of a 23 per cent chance of drought.

Private forecaster Skymet more or less agrees with IMD, but has responded ominously to the Kerala disappointment.

"Its (the monsoon's) further progress is likely to be staggered and slow," says GPS Sharma of Skymet.

Slow movement

The widespread fears of delayed rains have arisen from the slow advancement of the southwest monsoon over the Andaman Sea, which normally occurs around May 20 every year, with a standard deviation of about a week.

A scientist in the Ministry of Earth Sciences told Mail Today that it is too early to say whether India will witness drought-like conditions, but acknowledged that a low pressure system in the Indian Ocean is affecting the flow of the monsoon current.

Even as fears loom large of a delayed and weak monsoon, the Met Department has claimed that conditions are becoming favourable for the onset of rains over Kerala and its further advance into more parts of South Arabian Sea, remaining parts of the Maldives-Comorin area, some parts of Tamil Nadu and Bay of Bengal and few parts of the northeastern states during the next three to four days.

The IMD has forecast the onset of the monsoon over Kerala on June 5, with a model error of plus or minus four days.

The monsoon normally sets in over Kerala on June 1 every year and its onset signals the commencement of the rainy season across the region.

Indicators

Last year, the monsoon set in over Kerala on June 1 while in 2012, it had set in on June 5. In 2011, Kerala started receiving rainfall on May 29 while a year earlier, the monsoon reached the state on May 31.

In 2009, rains struck the coastal state on May 23. Operational forecasts for the onset of the monsoon are issued on the basis of six indicators – minimum temperature over northwest India, pre-monsoon rainfall peak over the southern peninsula, outgoing long-wave radiation over South China Sea, lower tropospheric zonal wind over southeast Indian Ocean, upper tropospheric zonal wind over east equatorial Indian Ocean and outgoing long-wave radiation over southwest Pacific region.

Allaying fears of a delayed monsoon, the head of IMD's forecast department, B.P. Yadav, said: "From the ground parameters, the conditions are favourable for the onset of monsoon over Kerala and we stick to our forecast of monsoon striking Kerala on June 5, with a margin of four days. There are no changes in the given forecast."

THUNDERSTORMS HIT DELHI'S RADIO STATIONS

Friday's thunderstorm has not only hit electricity and water supply across the city, but also popular radio stations.

Three popular FM stations – 92.7 Big FM, 94.3 Radio One and Hit 95 FM -- stations have been inactive since Friday.

With the storm having led to a breakage in several electricity transmission poles across the city, power department officials said the stations usually had power back up.

"The loss of transmission has nothing to do with the fault in transmission poles caused by the storm. It is a problem with the radio station transmission," said a power department official.

Officials in Big 92.7 FM said the fault had been caused by the rain and thunderstorm.

Below-normal rainfall, however, could spell doom for Indian agriculture, whose fate is determined largely by the yearly monsoon rains.

The monsoons account for 80 per cent of precipitation in India. In the absence of irrigation facilities in more than half of India's farmlands, agriculture depends solely on monsoon rains.

About 60 per cent of the country's total food grain production is from rain-fed areas. Agriculture accounts for about 17 per cent of the GDP, with 75 per cent of farmers depending directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihood.

The high correlation between a failed monsoon and a dip in GDP (see accompanying box) is an economic fact in India.

In a season when unseasonal, intermittent rains from February to May have already damaged rabi (winter) crops, especially wheat, the advent of below normal rain is bound to affect kharif (summer- monsoon) crops too, particularly rice sown between now and the middle of August.

This, in turn, is bound to make food-grain prices shoot up. An errant monsoon can augment the problems of the Indian economy.

The wholesale price index-based food inflation stood at 5.2 per cent in April. Retail food inflation too remains unrelentingly high, with the consumer price index accelerating to 8.59 per cent in April 2014.

A good harvest of crops brings prosperity to farmers and in turn increases their spending, thus boosting the overall economy.