Where is the Monsoon?
Somehow, the Indian Meteorological Department seems to be getting its predictions about the monsoon very wrong indeed. After being told that India could expect an early monsoon this year, we were deeply disappointed to find that the expected rains failed to arrive. That was because a tropical storm over the Arabian Sea, which later intensified to become Cyclone Phet, steered the South-West Monsoon system away from the Indian coast in a north-westerly direction. Phet ultimately faded away, but it deprived us of much-needed rain to beat the unbearable summer heat.
One cannot exaggerate the importance of the South-West Monsoon for India. Without this seasonal wind that brings rain to the sub-continent, large parts of this country would be desert. Unlike many other countries, India gets nearly all its precipitation in a single season. The date of its arrival can make or mar the fortunes of millions in India.
In the old days, the monsoon winds mean more than just rain. It was the South-West Monsoon that brought Arab trading ships from the Red Sea to the shores of India, including Goa, right from Roman times. The ships used the monsoon ‘trade’ wind to reach India’s west coast before the South-West Monsoon set in, and returned only after the rains, with the beginning of the North-East Monsoon.
In summer, most parts of the Indian sub-continent become hot, parched and thirsty. That is when, far away in the Indian Ocean, somewhere near the island of Madagascar, the Indian monsoon wind takes shape as a high pressure area. A simultaneous low-pressure area forming over the plateau of Tibet causes this wind to begin its long journey towards the Indian sub-continent, picking up massive amounts of moisture on its way.
Systems of high and low pressure are integral parts of the monsoon. They serve as ‘steering currents’. Unfortunately, very large variations in these pressure systems also give rise to tropical storms and cyclones. Last year, it was Cyclone Aila – it caused unprecedented havoc in Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra, sinking dozens of fishing boats with heavy loss of life – which delayed the monsoon, stalling it by nearly three weeks soon after its onset. This year, it was Cyclone Phet that drew away the rain clouds after they had reached the shores of Kerala in the last few days of May.
The Meteorological Department has predicted that rainfall is expected to be good this year, at 98 per cent of the long-period average. The department develops its forecasting models on highly complex models processed by a super-computer. A large number of different climatic events all over the world affect the monsoon, and all these have to be taken into account before the department can make an estimation of how the monsoon is going to be over India’s different states, so that they are able to make a calculated guess about the quantity of rainfall, its consistency and the area covered.
The problem is that particularly over the last few years, the Met Department’s predictions about the monsoon have been spectacularly off. Each year, the department has projected that the monsoon will be ‘normal’, only to find that it has actually turned out to be seriously deficient in some parts of the country, and grossly excessive in others. Critics say that this is because the Met’s forecasting model factors in too many variables, as a result of which the outcome cannot be anything except ‘normal’.
Whatever the truth of that, India’s Met Department also lacks seriously in local forecasting. Many of their forecasts are for entire Indian states or regions. To say that “there will be scattered showers in Konkan, Madhya Maharashtra and Vidarbha”, for example, is meaningless and useless. It’s like saying that there will be scattered showers over France, Spain and Portugal! Surely the Met can do better than that.
