Weak monsoon predicted in Delhi, neighbourhood: IMD

Rain gods don't seem to be smiling on the national capital this year as the India Meteorological Department (IMD) Tuesday predicted a weak monsoon in Delhi and surrounding areas.

According to IMD, northwest India comprising Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh is likely to receive very little rainfall.

"Monsoon will remain weak in the national capital and neighbouring states. Delhi will not receive heavy rainfall this monsoon season," IMD director B.P. Yadav told IANS.

The Met department said the city will receive regular thundershowers from July 9, but ruled out the possibility of heavy monsoon rains in the region.

Monsoon is likely to be active over central India during the next two to three days and heavy showers are expected in Maharashtra and Gujarat.

IMD had predicted below normal rainfall for the country with the northwest region receiving the lowest rainfall compared to other areas. The region is likely to get 81 percent of the average rainfall, which is far below the national average of 93 percent.

Rainfall for the country in June was 48.8 mm against a normal of 101.7 mm with a deficiency of 52 percent. In northwest India, it was 21 mm, almost 48 percent deficient.

Drought threat looms over north India

The earlier prediction brought bad news. Now, the latest Met update on the monsoon seems to affirm that northern India is staring at a drought. As of July 6, monsoon was 44% deficient in the region that includes Punjab, Haryana and west UP - the granary of the country.

This is on top of almost nil pre-monsoon showers in the entire belt. Worse, the forecast for the next 10 days, crucial for the sowing of the kharif crop, says the region can expect scanty rain at best.

Time is running out for farmers. The north remains the only region where the monsoon didn't make up for lost time last week. While the monsoon was 43% deficient overall on July 2, by July 6, the deficit had come down to 37%. In the north, however, the shortfall rose another 2 percentage points in this period.

"Overall, the situation is improving everywhere except northwest India," said D S Pai, director of the National Climate Centre at IMD, Pune. "For this region, which includes J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and UP, we stick by our earlier prediction of 81% rain for the season."

B P Yadav, director, IMD Delhi, agreed the situation for northwest India didn't seem very promising. "We are hoping the monsoon will recover in the remaining two months. By July 9, the area is likely to start getting easterly winds that will bring rain and reduce temperature. But it's going to be very sporadic rain," he said.

Government is hoping late rains would mitigate the situation. But a lot of damage has already been done. "Paddy, which is the dominant kharif crop in Punjab and Haryana will take a hit. Other crops like bajra, jowar, pulses as well as fodder will suffer. Due to water stress, I except lower yields for standing crops like cotton and sugarcane as well,'' said Ramesh Chand, professor at Indian Council for Agricultural Research.

The one silver lining is that irrigation is well developed in the worst-hit areas. Said Abhijeet Sen, economist and member of the Planning Commission, ''Urgent steps to control the use of water and power need to be taken. If we manage to do that, around 80% kharif sowing can take place.''

Less rain also had a direct bearing on the power produced in the state though there was not a very big dip in generation. However, with rains continuing to play truant, the state's maize crop is in trouble. Director, agriculture, J C Rana, said maize could not be sown in over 70,50 hectares. Apple production in the state is also expected to fall to 1.80 crore boxes as against the normal of 3.2 crore boxes.

The situation is just as grim in Haryana. Delay in rainfall has created a major power and water crisis. Though the state government tried its best to deal with the situation with purchase of additional power from different sources, unscheduled power cuts continue to plague people, triggering protests in various parts of the state. "Yes, there is a huge gap between demand and supply, with shortage sometimes going up to 200 lakh units. But we are trying to bridge this gap by purchasing power," said Haryana power minister Randeep Singh Surjewala.

As in the rest of north India, monsoon arrived late in Uttar Pradesh and has since gone weak. The rainfall in UP has been 71% below normal so far. According to reports, paddy had been sown in only 25%-30% of its normal area in the state. Paddy sowing is usually complete by the first week of July. The sugarcane yield is also expected to drop by 20%.

The water scene in Maharashtra is grim with all irrigation dams having just 11% of water because of bad rainfall. In Mumbai, authorities announced that the city will get only 30% of its normal water supply.

The situation in Tamil Nadu is no better. Paddy farmers in the state are now hoping and praying for bountiful rains in Karnataka. For, only if the skies open up in Karnataka, the surplus Cauvery water will gush down to the Stanley reservoir at Mettur in Tamil Nadu to irrigate the agricultural fields in at least 11 districts. The water level in Mettur is abysmally low and its sluices remain shut even 20 days after it is scheduled to be opened for irrigating the fields in the Cauvery delta.

In West Bengal, the monsoon got delayed by nearly three weeks following the Aila that hit on May 25. Various theories were offered on what had turned the rains away. While the Met office claimed the cyclone had sucked away the moisture, a section of experts held the changing weather pattern responsible. But whatever be the reason, the state has suffered a 40% drop in the amount of rainfall received this season.

In Gujarat, urgent prayers are being held in many temples to invoke rain. The state received only 7cm rainfall till Tuesday which is just 8% of the average rainfall for the season. By this time last year, the state had got 18.9% rainfall and 47% in 2007

Original:: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Drought-threat-looms-over-north-India/articleshow/4751144.cms

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ENSO update

Strong indicators of El Niño persist

Indicators suggest an El Niño event is developing across the Pacific Basin. Conditions have reached a point that, should they persist at such levels through the remainder of the southern winter and into spring, 2009 will be considered an El Niño year.

Leading climate models indicate that warming of the Pacific will continue for the next few seasons, with very little chance of the current development stalling or reversing.

Continuing El Niño signals include central Pacific Ocean surface temperatures around 1°C above average, and supporting sub-surface temperatures up to 4°C warmer than normal. Trade winds remain weaker than average, and there is an emerging signal of enhanced cloudiness near the date-line

Conversely, the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) rose over the past week to near zero. However, this would appear to be a response to local weather conditions near Darwin and Tahiti, rather than a long-term climate signal, and hence the SOI is likely to fall again in the weeks ahead.

El Niño events are usually (but not always) associated with below normal rainfall in the second half of the year across large parts of southern and inland eastern Australia.

After many weeks of positive values, the most recent value of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), as measured by the Dipole Mode Index (DMI), was slightly negative. In the past, positive IOD values have been associated with drier conditions through south east Australia in winter and spring.

• The Pacific Ocean sea surface is significantly warmer than the long-term average across most of the tropical Pacific, with El Niño thresholds having been reached in central to eastern areas.
• A large amount of the sub-surface water of the tropical Pacific is also warmer than the long-term average, particularly in the east.
• The latest 30-day SOI value is +1, while the monthly value for June was −2.
• Trade winds remain weaker than normal across the western equatorial Pacific.
• Consistent with an emerging El Niño, cloudiness near the date-line has recently increased.
• All international climate models predict the tropical Pacific to continue to warm and to be above El Niño thresholds throughout most of the second half of 2009.

Emerging El Nino set to drive up carbon emissions

A key measure of El Nino weather patterns eased in June, suggesting the potentially damaging condition may be developing slowly, although India's monsoon will remain weak, Australia's weather bureau said.

An El Nino, which means "little boy" in Spanish, is driven by an abnormal warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, and creates havoc in weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region.

The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), a key factor in identifying an El Nino that is calculated from monthly and seasonal fluctuations in air pressure between Tahiti and Darwin, eased in June to negative 2 from a negative 5 in May, the bureau said on Tuesday.

A sustained negative SOI often indicates El Nino, a condition that can bring drought conditions to Australia's farmlands, weaken the Asian monsoon critical for Indian crops, stir up storms in the Gulf of Mexico and cause flooding in Latin America.

"Minus 10 is an often used threshold level and it just got to there a few times, but it hasn't been sustained at that level," Sam Cleland, author of the Bureau of Meterology's weekly Tropical Climate Note, said on Tuesday.

"I don't think we'd make the call just yet that we have an El Nino event in place," he said ahead of the bureau's El Nino update on Wednesday.

Its last report said an El Nino was very likely in 2009 and may be declared in coming weeks. The last El Nino was in 2006.

Across the globe an emerging El Nino weather pattern threatens to cause droughts and floods and trigger a spike in planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning forests.

El Nino is a warming of tropical Pacific waters that affects wind circulation patterns. Its effects on the global climate vary from one event to the next.

Trying to predict how El Nino will be affected by global warming is a major challenge, scientists say, although data shows El Ninos have become more frequent and more intense over the past three decades. The last event was in 2006.

"I don't think there are any studies that are saying El Nino will become less severe but there is disagreement among the climate models on whether they will become more severe or stay steady," said Matthew England of the Climate Change Research Center in Sydney.

Getting the forecasting right is crucial for farmers in planning their crops, and even for the oil industry in assessing storm risks in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Certainly we know from past climates that El Nino intensity has varied. As climate changes, we know that the intensity of El Nino can wax and wane over long time scales," he said.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said last week an El Nino was almost certain this year and the signs point to one already well underway. A formal declaration could be within days

One of the biggest threats from El Nino comes from the release of vast amounts of greenhouse gases through the burning of dried out forests.

Scientists say there is very strong correlation between El Nino and drought in Southeast Asia, which has large areas of carbon-rich peat forests

"People are waiting for appropriate conditions to get rid of the forests," said Pep Canadell of the Global Carbon Project in Canberra.

"So the drier the El Nino the more incentive there is for people to take advantage of those unique conditions," he said. Most of the burning occurs in Indonesia.

SPIKE IN TEMPERATURES

During the very intense El Nino of 1997/98, fires in Southeast Asia released between 2.9 billion 9.4 billion metric tons of CO2, blanketing the region in a choking haze. The smoke equated to between 15 and 40 percent of global fossil fuel emissions and is credited with causing a spike in global temperatures.

By comparison, average annual emissions from forest fires in Southeast Asia between 2000 and 2006 were 470 million metric tons of CO2, while average fossil fuel emissions for the same period in the region were 543 million metric tons of CO2, said Canadell.

Over the past two years, forest fire emissions have plunged because of wet weather.

"I think the next El Nino we have here in Southeast Asia is going to be a big one in terms of emissions," said Canadell, whose project issues annual reports on the planet's "carbon budget."

"The longer it takes for an El Nino to come, the bigger the emissions will be because the more people will be keen in burning because they have been waiting all this time."

The effects of the current El Nino, if confirmed, could already be apparent in the weakening of equatorial trade winds that normally blow strongly east to west and in the amount of cloud in the eastern Pacific.

"As El Nino is developing right now we should start to experience its impacts as we speak," said Harry Hendon, a senior climate scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne.

"Historically our biggest impacts are in the (southern) spring. But we start to see them as early as winter," he said.

SAME BUT DIFFERENT

Normally, warm ocean water is piled up in the Pacific around east Asia causing rain and moisture-laden winds that flow over parts of Australia.

But during El Nino, the warm waters migrate east toward South America, taking the wet weather, often causing floods in Colombia, Ecuador and elsewhere.

It's unclear how intense the next El Nino will be but Hendon said even weak El Ninos can have a dire impact on rainfall in Australia, depending on where the warm water pool was in Pacific.

"El Ninos that are peaking in the central Pacific have a bigger negative impact on rainfall on Australia than El Ninos that peak further east," said Hendon.

Complicating the picture, scientists now know there are at least two types of El Nino, one in which the warm waters pile up against the Pacific coast of equatorial South America, and the other in which warmest of the waters are in the central Pacific.

Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States released a study last week showing that periodic warming of the central Pacific was linked to an increase in Atlantic hurricanes, a finding that could change the way oil firms assess storm risks for operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Previously, El Ninos in general were thought to suppress hurricane activity, but the latest research suggests this is only for episodes where the warmest waters are off the South America.

"The fundamental problem is we don't simulate El Nino very well with our existing climate models," said Hendon. "That makes it a real challenge to run your model for a future climate and see how El Nino will behave."

Original from:: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE56604320090707?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

The Truant Monsoon: Why India Is Worried

The bad news for India is scrawled across the scorching sky. Not a speck of monsoon clouds has been spotted over much of north and northwestern India for weeks, and the meteorological office has confirmed fears that the country will get late and below-normal rains this year. In a nation where 60% of farmland depends on rains, and where farms provide livelihood to more than 60% of the population, the news has triggered widespread panic. Top bureaucrats have been huddled up in meetings to chart out contingency plans to minimize damage to an already-stagnant agriculture sector in an economy which has only just begun to show signs of recovery following the worldwide slump.

No one who hasn't witnessed an Indian summer can imagine the unyielding heat that sucks the earth bone-dry and churns up the fearsome dry wind - the loo - that wilts everything in its path. By mid- to end-June, the monsoon usually covers most of India, bringing down the mercury, soaking the ground and swelling the rivers that are the lifeline of Indian agriculture. The national meteorological department had predicted a normal monsoon earlier this year, but when there was no sign of rain until the middle of June, alarm bells began to ring. Farmers in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh began holding prayers at major temples. Indian media began to report occult rituals such as farmers arranging "weddings" for frogs and women in one Uttar Pradesh village tying themselves to the yoke to plough land in efforts to please the rain gods. Even farmers in irrigated areas that are not completely dependent on the monsoon are worried. "We keep reading in the papers that the level of water in the dams is falling by a foot every day," says Balbir Singh, a farmer in the Jalandhar district of Punjab, which lies in the northern belt considered India's bread basket.

The government now predicts that the late monsoon will still bring 93% of an average year's rain. "We're still hoping the rains will come," says K.R. Koundal, director of research at the New Delhi-based Indian Agricultural Research Institute, the government-run institute for agricultural research, education and extension. But for this to hold true, there will have to be moderate to heavy rains from June through September to make up for the shortfall, and even a 7% gap has economists and agricultural scientists worried. India's long stagnant agriculture sector, which has grown only 2% over the last decade, has already led to much farmer distress. Instances of farmer indebtedness and suicide, already frequent, could go up. Although experts point out that there is no immediate threat to India's food security after last year's bumper crop last year, low yields could make the proposed Food Security Act, new legislation that aims to provide poor families with a legally enforceable right to food, practically difficult to implement. The effects are being felt beyond the farms in urban areas as well, which are reeling under water and power shortages due to declining water levels in reservoirs that provide both water and hydroelectricity. Delhi residents took to the streets on Wednesday, only to be told to use resources "judiciously."

A bad crop year could aggravate India's overall economic slowdown. "If production suffers, the [low] income effect will bring down rural demand, which has been buoyant so far," says Anjan Roy, Adviser for Economic Affairs at the New Delhi-based Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. "This, in turn, will affect industrial production." Inflation in India is deeply influenced by food and food-related items' prices. Wholesale, retail as well as futures prices of food items are rising every day. "If there's runaway inflation, it will altogether throw economic policy haywire," Roy says. "If the Reserve Bank of India resorts to tightening the monetary policy, the industrial sector, which is already under duress, will be badly hit. It will negate the recent fiscal stimuli."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has asked officials to monitor the situation closely, and the relevant ministries and state governments are preparing contingency plans, including distributing drought-resistant seeds, encouraging farmers to grow crops that require less water, and even implementing cloud seeding programs to bring on rains. Experts expect tax breaks and price supports in the budget to be announced early next month. Roy of FICCI says the worst may yet be averted. "Last year the agricultural season was good and procurement was higher than normal," he says, "But the government can start taking preparatory steps such as imports of critical food items such as pulses because currently global food prices are low."

Some agriculture experts even see a potential silver lining to the absentee clouds. They hope the truant monsoon will jolt India's bureaucracy into action to implement much-needed and long-delayed agricultural reforms, as well as improve India's water resources management. Steps should be initiated to link the farmers to the market and improve farm and post-harvest infrastructure, and provide a favorable tax regime for the agriculture and related sectors. The wasteful subsidy regime also needs to be overhauled. Fertilizer subsidies mostly benefit rich farmers and lead to gross overuse. "Subsidized electricity for farmers encourages excessive use, both of electricity and groundwater. And because it is mostly generated from coal, it results in a large amount of CO2 emissions," says Gerald C. Nelson, Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute based in Washington D.C. Dr Rajeswari S. Raina, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, adds that India needs a coherent policy on rainfed agriculture. "The national agriculture policy talks exclusively about irrigated agriculture despite 60% of Indian farms being entirely dependent on rains," she says.

Although no one in India is explicitly blaming the late monsoon on global warming, a Purdue University study released earlier this year said climate change could influence monsoon dynamics by reducing summer precipitation, delaying the onset of rains and causing longer gaps between rainy periods. "We need to accept now that climate change is something that is bound to happen," says Dr Vibha Dhawan, Director, Bioresources and Biotechnology at The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi. "Not just high temperatures but fluctuating temperatures. Not just drought but also floods." We already have such varieties but we've forgotten about them during the last 40-50 years of high-input agriculture. She says better crops need to be re-discovered and developed through traditional methods as well as new technologies such as genetically modified seeds. "And we need to build a buffer stock of such seeds," she adds. If India hopes to get back and stay on a high-growth trajectory, it cannot afford to leave its fate at the mercy of the skies.

Original from:: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1907345,00.html

Cyclone Aila :: revisited

A powerful cyclone tore across parts of coastal Bangladesh and eastern India on May 25, triggering tidal surges and flooding that killed at least 275 people and left millions marooned by floodwater or forced to take refuge in shelters.

Monsoon floods leave nearly 500,000 homeless in India's northeast

Flood waters have inundated scores of villages in India's northeast, leaving nearly 500,000 people homeless, an official said Monday.

At least one person has died in the floods, a 55-year-old man who drowned when his boat capsized in Assam state, said Mantu Thakuria, a police officer. It was the first death reported in the state since the rains began last Wednesday.

Nearly 500,000 people have been displaced by the floods, which have affected 10 of the state's 27 districts, Assam's Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman told The Associated Press. They include nearly 100,000 people marooned on Majuli island in the Brahmaputra River.

On Sunday, the overflowing river washed away five villages, forcing nearly 4,000 residents to flee to makeshift relief camps, said Barman. The area is nearly 80 miles (130 kilometres) east of Gauhati, the capital of Assam.

Last week, the Brahmaputra breached a 328-foot (100-meter) stretch of a newly built embankment. At least 300 villages in Lakhimpur district, about 220 miles (350 kilometres) north of Gauhati, have been inundated.

The monsoon rains usually hit India from June to September. Assam, a state of 26 million people, suffers flooding almost every year. Last year, millions of people were forced to temporarily abandon their homes.

El Nino developing slower, India monsoon to stay weak

A key measure of El Nino weather patterns eased in June, suggesting the potentially damaging condition may be developing slowly, although India's monsoon will remain weak, Australia's weather bureau said.

An El Nino, which means "little boy" in Spanish, is driven by an abnormal warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, and creates havoc in weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region.

The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), a key factor in identifying an El Nino that is calculated from monthly and seasonal fluctuations in air pressure between Tahiti and Darwin, eased in June to negative 2 from a negative 5 in May, the bureau said on Tuesday.

A sustained negative SOI often indicates El Nino, a condition that can bring drought conditions to Australia's farmlands, weaken the Asian monsoon critical for Indian crops, stir up storms in the Gulf of Mexico and cause flooding in Latin America.

"Minus 10 is an often used threshold level and it just got to there a few times, but it hasn't been sustained at that level," Sam Cleland, author of the Bureau of Meterology's weekly Tropical Climate Note, said on Tuesday.

"I don't think we'd make the call just yet that we have an El Nino event in place," he said ahead of the bureau's El Nino update on Wednesday.

Its last report said an El Nino was very likely in 2009 and may be declared in coming weeks. The last El Nino was in 2006.

David Palmer, a meteorologist at private forecasting firm the Weather Company says indicators suggest there is a 60 percent chance of an El Nino developing in August, the month when it usually can be determined whether the weather pattern exists.

"We've been suggesting for some time now that there is an El Nino developing but it is not until August that you can say that for sure," said Palmer.

"If I were a betting man I would be putting my money on it."

But Cleland said the Pacific trade winds, another key El Nino factor, had also weakened in June.

"The equatorial Pacific Ocean continues to develop into a more El Nino like pattern," said Cleland, manager of climate services at the bureau's Darwin office.

"To call an El Nino or not is difficult and it takes a number of parameters over a sustained period. The formal definition of an El Nino often occurs in hindsight," he said.

The last severe El Nino in 1998 killed more than 2,000 people and caused billions of dollars in damages to crops, infrastructure and mines in Australia and Asia. It came in the middle of the Asian crisis that roiled financial markets.

India, one of the world's biggest producers and consumers of everything from sugar to soybeans, is already experiencing a weaker annual monsoon. Its faltering sugar crop has helped drive world prices of the commodity to their highest in three years.

India's monsoon will remain weak according to the latest Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) index, which gauges the eastward progress of tropical rain, Cleland said. It was too early to get a read on the potential intensity of a new El Nino, he added.

"There's no strong indication at this stage of what level of impact this ENSO event could have," he said, adding that some weak El Ninos have had severe impacts on Australia rainfall, while stronger El Ninos have only had marginal impacts.

Original from:: http://in.reuters.com/article/economicNews/idINIndia-40861720090707?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=11584

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