Breaking 4-year trend, monsoon ends with ‘below normal’ rainfall

NEW DELHI: Breaking the four year trend of good rainfall in either ‘normal’ or ‘above normal’ category during 2019-2022, India recorded ‘below normal’ monsoon rainfall at 94.4% of the long-period average, according to data for the June-September period released by the India Meteorological Depart- ment (IMD) on Saturday, reports Vishwa Mohan. The Met department, however, forecast ‘normal’ rainfall for winter monsoon in Peninsular India during October-December.
Rainfall in the range of 96104% of the long-period average (LPA) is considered normal.Despite prevailingEl Nino conditions (warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean that impact monsoon negatively), the monsoon season ended with ‘close to normal’ rainfall.

Effect of other meteorological factors reduced the impact of El Nino to an extent and it helped in taking the overall monsoon very close to normal, the way we had predicted it,” said IMD director general M Mohapatra.
The Met department had predicted a ‘normal’ monsoon this year at 96% of LPA with an error margin of +/4%. But huge deficit (36%) of August dragged the overall monsoon rainfall to 94.4% of LPA of 87 cm (based on data of 1971-2020). Around 73% of the total area in the country, however, received ‘normal’ rainfall and 9% got ‘excess’ rainfall. “We have been analysing what went wrong in August and sensitised all academic and research institutions to study it,” said Mohapatra.

The IMD data show that not all El Nino years were bad monsoon years and that 40% of such years in the past received nor mal to above-normal monsoon rainfall. Out of 15 El Nino years during 1951-2022, there were six years with normal to above normal rainfall. El Nino years normally report higher than normal temperatures — an indication that the winter this year may not be severe.