NEW DELHI: Southern peninsular India and the United Kingdom appear to be on the same page as far as climate change is concerned. Both witnessed their hottest June in recorded history. Data compiled by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts revealed that June this year was globally the hottest on record.
Traditionally, the Agni Natchathiram period in Tamil Nadu was its hottest. Also called dog days, the period this year was from May 4 to May 29. Looks like climate change has pushed the dog days by a month.
In fact, June was south peninsular India’s hottest and driest month since 1901. The peninsula, a gateway to the Southwest monsoon, received record deficient rainfall in the month and had temperatures above normal.
Besides, the June rainfall over the homogeneous region of the southern peninsular India was 88.6 mm—the lowest since 1901. The previous lowest was 90.7 mm in 1976. Rainfall deficiency at 45% was unprecedented for the whole peninsular region, while the deficit was 10% countrywide (See table).
Except for Tamil Nadu, June rainfall in all southern states were in the ‘Deficient’ (-59% to -20%) to the ‘Large Deficient’ (-99% to -60%) category. Kerala, where the Southwest monsoon enters the mainland, had a deficit of 60%.
Other sub-divisions of the south peninsula like coastal Karnataka, Southern and Northern Karnataka, Rayalseema, Telangana, coastal Andhra Pradesh, too, had deficient precipitation.
However, Tamil Nadu received 6% excess rainfall due to some cyclonic circulations over the state, not due to monsoon winds.
Moreover, more than half of India is staring at drought-like conditions as the rainfall deficit stood at 10% at the end of June. Out of India’s 36 meteorological sub-divisions, 19 received deficient rainfall in June.
Experts see it as a fallout of El Nino—the warming of the Pacific Ocean—which is getting stronger, and the emergence of the Biparjoy Cyclone coinciding with the onset of monsoon.
“This year’s monsoon onset was weak or below normal due to El Nino,” said Mahesh Palawat of Skymet, a private agency providing weather-related solutions. “Though the monsoon onset was on June 8, it hadn’t activated till June 17. Also, the timing of the cyclone and the onset of monsoon were similar, which took away the monsoon’s moisture,” he added.
Dr Akshay Deoras, research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK, explained that the lack of low-pressure system activity over the Bay of Bengal and other unfavourable large-scale weather conditions kept the southern peninsular region hot and dry.
Experts see no scope for improvement in rainfall this monsoon. There is a high probability (around 90%) that El Nino conditions will continue until this December. Not only the southwest monsoon, even the Northeast winter rainfall, especially over Tamil Nadu, may get impacted.
