Get ready for a scorcher of a summer

Get ready for a scorching summer this year with rainfall falling 24 to 84 per cent below normal this winter in northern and central India. The average temperature was also two to four degrees Celsius above normal. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 16, 2009, 02:22:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Get ready for a scorching summer this year with rainfall falling 24 to 84 per cent below normal this winter in northern and central India. The average temperature was also two to four degrees Celsius above normal.

Many perennial water sources in the Himalayan region, a major source for summer water for major rivers like Sutlej, Yamuna and Ganga that provide drinking water to the Indian plains, have gone dry.

Another water source for rivers — the Himalayan glaciers — has received snowfall only once this winter compared to six to eight times in the previous years.

“It’s a drought-like situation in the entire northern region. We are heading for an acute problem,” said J.P. Dabral, president of NGO Himalayan Chipkoo Foundation.

The situation can be gauged from the fact that the dry winter has caused a fall in water level in hydo-power plants in Himalayan region like the Tehri Dam in Uttrakhand, which provides both water and power to Delhi.

Further fall in the water level would mean lesser generation of power, forcing the government to ration electricity supply to cities like Delhi during the summers.

“For the last two months, there has been almost no rains in central India and only little in the northern parts of the country. It is a crisis situation,” said a senior official of the Meteorological Department.

Data provided by the Indian Meteorological Department shows that the rainfall in January and February has been 24 to 84 per cent below normal. Northern and western India got only 60 millimetre (mm) of rainfall as compared to 147 mm in 2005.

Central India got only 4.7 mm of rain as compared to 30.7 mm in 2005.

GB Pant, former director of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, said the “negligible rainfall” can be attributed to weak western disturbances that cause precipitation in winters. “It could have happened because of global warming,” he said.

Dabral, however, blamed deforestation in the Himalayas as a cause for winters getting warmer. The mean winter temperature was 2 to 4 degree Celsius above normal in many parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra. “In some areas of Orissa and Maharashtra, maximum temperature crossed 40 degree Celsius in February. Such heat is witnessed during early summers,” a meteorological department official said.

A huge change in climate this winter has left farmers and agriculture scientists worried. “The crops on the fields are drying up. Even the level of underground water has fallen,” said Mahender Singh Thaikat, a farmer leader from Uttar Pradesh.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.