Research into monsoon riddle

The Union ministry of earth sciences and the UK-based natural environment research council (NERC) have undertaken a programme titled “Hydrologic and Carbon Services in Western Ghats” looking to quantify changes in the Indian monsoons, especially the Northeast, in consultation with scientists from Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.

Speaking to DC, Dr Jagdish Krishnaswamy, convener and senior fellow at the Suri Sehgal centre for biodiversity and conservation, Ashoka trust for reserch in ecology and the environment (ATREE), said most of the studies on the monsoon have been on the Southwest monsoon and not enough is known about Northeast Monsoon.

“We have chosen Nilgiris for the strategic advantage. Some of the sites in upper Nilgiris basin receive rainfall from both southwest and north east monsoons. We are analysing historically which sites have been receiving how much rainfall from a particular monsoon and the occurrence of extreme rainfall events. We are also trying to find out if there is any spatial shift or pattern to it over a period of a few decades. This information will help the meteorologists forecast the monsoon better”. He said one of the peculiar things that past studies have found is El Nino and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) have one kind of effect on Southeast monsoon and the opposite effect on the Northeast. “So, we should in future figure out how to predict Northeast monsoon better, taking information from Southeast monsoon. This is something meteorologists and climatologist should also be researching on. The fact that you have one depression after another this year causing havoc in TN, it is important is figure out whether such events are going to happen more frequently”.

Recent studies on climate change impacts on rainfall in India show that the Western Ghats have faced an increase in the number of extreme rainfall events in the past few decades, said ecologist Dr R.S. Bhalla, who is also part of the leading squad, said.