India has ended up with 3 per cent less rain than normal during the monsoon months of June to September.
This is the first time since 2011 that the department was not able to forecast the overall ‘sign’ of the monsoon — meaning that it expected heavy rain but ended up with less than normal. In 2014 and 2015, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) could not anticipate the severity of the droughts but had indicated that monsoon would be below normal.
In 2011, the IMD said India would get below normal (95% of the average) rain, but the country ended up with 2 per cent more rain than normal.
“I am not much worried that we couldn’t get the trend right because all [monsoon] models in the world had expected a La Nina to form during the end of the monsoon,” K.J. Ramesh, Director-General of the IMD, told The Hindu. “Moreover there have been no reports of moisture stress from any region.”
Mr. Ramesh added that through the monsoon months, there were indications that East and Northwest India would see rain deficits, but the delayed La Nina greatly affected the rains in South India, which has so far seen an 8 per cent deficit.
Deficient rain over South India led to riots and violence in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the sharing of Cauvery waters. The IMD is expected to release a formal report on the monsoon’s performance on Monday.
Good sowingThe activation phase of La Nina — a weather phenomenon that is the converse of the El Nino and brings good rains to India — was supposed to boost rainl in September. However the near normal rains have so far been “well distributed”, Mr. Ramesh said, and had contributed to good kharif sowing.
