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What's the article about?
- It talks about the Monsoon Profile for the year 2023.
Relevance:
- GS1: Geography of India
- Prelims
Context:
- India's monsoon season in 2023 has been marked by uneven rainfall, with some regions experiencing excess rainfall and others facing drought-like conditions.
- The monsoon season, which runs from June to September, ended with a 6% rain deficit, the first deficit since 2018.
- This article analyzes the monsoon season in India, including the factors that contributed to the uneven rainfall, the impact on different regions, and the need for more resilient infrastructure.
Analysis:
- Factors Contributing to Uneven Rainfall:
- The El Niño, a cyclical warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, was on the horizon in April, indicating that the monsoon would be subdued.
- However, the experience of the monsoon this year was far from ordinary.
- The monsoon season was impacted by so-called western disturbances, which are extra-tropical storms from the Mediterranean region and normally not expected to play a major part in the monsoon.
- These disturbances caused episodes of intense rain, resulting in floods and landslides in several states in north India.
- These are fingerprints of the wide-ranging impacts of anthropogenic warming.
- Impact on Different Regions:
- About 9% of the country received excess rainfall, with 18% getting deficient and the rest of the country receiving normal rainfall.
- In Maharashtra, drought-like conditions were reported, and extreme water stress was reported in Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Karnataka. Matters came to a head in Karnataka with neighboring Tamil Nadu over the sharing of water from the Cauvery river.
- The India Meteorological Department has forecast a normal northeast monsoon from October to December and normal to above-normal rainfall over large parts of northwest India and south peninsular India.
- The signs are there of increased rains in several parts of south India.
- Need for Resilient Infrastructure:
- The spatial and temporal variance of the monsoon reiterates the need to invest in more resilient infrastructure that can be an all-weather insurance against the increasingly unpredictable vagaries of the global climate.
- The pattern in recent years is to improve forecast models that are better able to warn of significant changes in weather a week or two ahead than having approaches that fail to capture the dynamics of the Indian monsoon. More money and expertise should be directed towards this.
Way Forward:
- India's monsoon season in 2023 was marked by uneven rainfall, with some regions experiencing excess rainfall and others facing drought-like conditions. The El Niño and western disturbances were factors contributing to the uneven rainfall.
- The impact on different regions was varied, with some facing extreme water stress and others experiencing floods and landslides. The need for more resilient infrastructure that can withstand the unpredictable vagaries of the global climate is emphasized.
