If Agumbe continues to receive less rain, it may lose its tag of the rain capital of the state to Hulikal, a neighbouring range in the Western Ghats.
Agumbe in Thirthahalli taluk of Shimoga district is dubbed as the ‘Cherrapunjee of the South’. But Cherrapunjee itself is no longer the wettest place on Earth. It lost its crown to Mawsynram, also in Meghalaya.
While Hulikal received above-average rainfall of 3,231 mm this year, Agumbe, till July 15, had received only 2,807.2 mm of rainfall against its average of 3,070 mm.
With hardly five months left for the year to end, a senior officer at Agumbe Rainforest Research Station doubted whether Agumbe can record even average rainfall this year.
The station is the only permanent rainforest research station in the country. What is more worrisome for officials is that if the trend continues for another couple of years, Agumbe will lose its position as the “wettest place in the state’’.
No one was happier than Ravi Bhat, a local at Hulikal. After all, he had been measuring the rainfall near his home in Hulikal and comparing it with data provided by Agumbe Rainforest Research Station.
“I have been closely observing the rain pattern in Agumbe and Hulikal with rain gauges over the past five years. And I am quite convinced that Hulikal is now the state’s wettest place, though I have no proper data to substantiate it,’’ Bhat said.
Since the authenticity of data that come from Hulikal is questionable, meteorologists in Bangalore consider the whole exercise of comparing the rainfall in these two places quite meaningless. “Unlike Agumbe, there is no meteorological office at Hulikal. Nor are any trained meteorological observers posted there. Unskilled people posted there take the readings,’’ said a senior officer, adding that Hulikal should also have a meteorological observatory like the one at Agumbe, with qualified staff.
For the interest of the general Public I must give certain points on how rainfall is measured. First of all according to WMO criteria
ReplyDelete[1] There should be atleast one raingauge in every 250 Sq.Km area in plains and at least one raingauge for every 100 sq.km area in hilly areas.
[2] In India Fibre Glass Reinforced Polyester (FRP) Raingauge of diameter 159.6 mm and collector area 200 sq.cm is in use for the measurements of rainfall.
[3] This 200 sq.cm collector area raingauge must have relevant 20mm measure glass.
[4] Rainfall measurements should have to be taken at 0300Z [0830 hrs IST] daily without fail to enable comparison.
[5] The exposure of raingauge must be good.
Most of the raingauges maintained at vantage meteorological locations are NOT maintained by IMD. State government is maintaining such raingauges. Often the raingauge and measure glass combination may NOT be correct. Thus will lead to distorted or enhanced rainfall amount. {As happened in Chinna Kallar in 2007 ; in that year the annual rainfall was reported as 7000 mm because of the irrelevant measure glass.} In Agumbe too there were instances when the measurements were reported wrong.
In the light of the above I wish to state that Meteorologically vantage location should be properly assessed by scientific community and wish that Government should come out with rigid plans to deploy men and material at vantage locations to augment Disaster Management.