Southwest monsoon begins retreat

Season stayed an extra 20 days, auguring well for agriculture during the coming rabi sowing season

The southwest monsoon has begun withdrawing from North India, triggering the end of its four-month journey, starting June, over the sub-continent. Normally, the retreat should have begun in the first week of September but it stayed an extra 20 days, auguring well for agriculture during the coming rabi sowing season.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the monsoon season has ended in Rajasthan, parts of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, the eastern parts of Madhya Pradesh and some areas in Himachal Pradesh. “In the coming days, the rains would retract from more areas,” a senior IMD official added.

Overall rainfall deficiency at the end of the season this year should be five to six per cent, said the official, in line with their second-stage forecast released in June. It had, at the time, predicted cumulative rainfall would be 91 per cent of the Long Period Average (LPA), with a model error of plus and minus nine per cent. Rainfall is considered normal when within 96-104 per cent of the LPA. The latter term is the average of rain across the country during the four-month season during 1951-2001. This comes to 89 cm.

The met office regards the monsoon to have withdrawn if three conditions are met. These are cessation of rainfall for a continuous five days, considerable reduction in moisture content and establishment of an anti-cyclone in the troposphere.

The southwest monsoon is Indian agriculture’s lifeline, as less than half of arable land has proper irrigation facilities. It is also important for the general economy, as the rains provide almost 70 per cent of the total moisture received during the year.

After a delayed entry into the country, the rains were abnormally low in June and July.

At the end of July, the overall southwest monsoon was around 20 per cent deficient across the country with northwest India, Karnataka, parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra facing severe drought-like conditions. Rainfall deficiency in these parts was 60-80 per cent below normal by end-July.

The patchy performance had hurt sowing of the main kharif crops and by end-June, water levels in the 84 major reservoirs across the country had dipped to just 16 per cent of the Full Reservoir Level (FRL), precariously close to what was seen during the previous big drought, of 2009. The uneven rain impacted the sowing of almost all kharif crops, with coarse cereals, pulses and groundnut the worst hit.

The government’s first advance estimate for the 2012-2013 kharif crop marketing season, released on Monday, estimated foodgrain output to drop almost 10 per cent this year as compared to last year. Pulses production is estimated to fall 14.6 per cent and of coarse cereals by 18.3 per cent. Oilseeds’ output is projected to drop 9.6 per cent. The loss would have been much higher if the rains had not shown a remarkable recovery from July end.