The unpredictability of Indian monsoon has escalated in the past 30 years with increase in frequency of dry spells and intensity of wet spells, a new study has found, hinting at global warming having an impact on the Indian water-cycle.
The unpredictability of Indian monsoon has escalated in the past 30 years with increase in frequency of dry spells and intensity of wet spells, a new study has found, hinting at global warming having an impact on the Indian water-cycle.
HT Image
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
The study by Stanford University comes at the time when the Indian Meteorological Department has predicted below normal monsoon. The summer monsoon is responsible for 85% of India’s annual precipitation and is vital for the country’s agricultural sector.
Stanford’s Woods Institute for Environment statistically analysed IMD’s monsoon data for a period between 1950 and 1980 and then 1981 to 2011.
“The statistical techniques show that the changes in these characteristics are robust and that these changes are unlikely to happen purely by chance,” said the research paper published in journal Nature Climate Change.
The team also found changes in the atmosphere — such as winds and moisture — could be responsible for the changes in wet and dry spells.
Senior author Noah Diffenbaugh, a senior fellow at the institute, said that there were many that global warming should cause heavier downpours and more frequent dry spells. “That’s what we’ve found here, but India is a complex region, so we want to be sure before we point the finger at global warming or any other cause,” he added.
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.
