'Indian monsoons set to have more heavy rain due to global warming': Expert

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru

Shorter spells of heavy rain, in addition to spatial disparities would be the new normal for monsoons in India, eminent climate scientist Madhavan Nair Rajeevan forecasted. The former secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India, spoke about the extreme events during monsoon due to climate change, in a post-workshop session on climate change reporting hosted by Christ University, in partnership with the US Consulate, Kolkata.

“Although our Indian monsoon is a robust one and is not affected by climate change, the duration of rainfall will differ, in addition to disparities of rain in regions,” he added. In the monsoon, India only gets around 122 hours of rain, which according to Rajeevan is a very short period of time. “For example, Ahmedabad receives 80cm of rain.

However, 40 cm of it will pour in 16 hours. This results in very scattered rain in over 100 hours,” he said. India depends a lot on the monsoon, as half of the population is employed in the agriculture sector. “There’s a huge correlation between the two, but they’re not linear. When a drought occurs, at least 2-5 per cent of the GDP is impacted and then it recovers after heavy rainfall,” he said, quoting a study by Madhav Gadgill from 2006.

Due to global warming, the quantum of rainfall would increase in a few places, but the days of rain may reduce. “Although days of rainfall in Kerala and the northeast may decrease, places in Rajasthan, Maharashtra and a few in Karnataka may have increased rainfall. The impact of El Nino was felt heavily as rainfall across the country was scattered and resulted in droughts in a few places. However, Rajeevan contested that the country has had as many droughts without the impact of El Nino. “Droughts are seen only in 50 per cent of recorded El Nino years,” he went on to state.

Flash droughts will also occur, due to continuous dry spells impacting the soil moisture resulting in crop failure over a short period of time. Finally, due to climate change, Rajeevan forecasted less cool days, and an increase in wet bulb temperature, where the temperature and humidity are high. This plays host to a lot of health issues," he said, adding that cooler days will be a reality.