Rainfall in the range of 96-104 per cent 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 normal 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.
“It would, however, be premature to predict anything at this juncture. We will come out with the winter temperature outlook for December-February later,” said Mohapatra.
Though June also reported a deficit of 9%, it was almost on the predicted lines. July and September were, on the other hand, good in terms of monsoon with 13% higher rainfall in both months. Good rainfall in July (main sowing season of Kharif crops) and overall normal rainfall in the monsoon core zone (rainfed areas) helped the Kharif sowing operations which finally ended with higher than normal (average of last five years) acreage and also higher than the sown area of last year.
The IMD’s season-end report shows that out of the total 36 meteorological subdivisions, three constituting 9% of the total area of the country received excess rainfall , 26 subdivisions (73% of the total area) received normal and seven subdivisions (18% of the total area) received deficient rainfall during the season.
Kerala was the worst hit among those seven meteorological subdivisions which got deficient rainfall. Others were Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram & Tripura (NMMT); Gangetic West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, East Uttar Pradesh and South interior Karnataka.
Besides extreme variability, the monsoon this year was also marked by two major intense heavy rainfall spells over Himachal Pradesh — July 6-15 and August 10-15 — that caused extreme flooding during the period due to occurrence of mini cloudburts over the state. Some other parts of the country — Chandigarh, Saurashtra, Konkan and Telangana — too witnessed exceptionally heavy rainfall, mostly in July.
