INDIAN WEATHER: FEAR OF DROUGHT AND DOWNPOUR

South Asia, of which India is a dominant entity, is the poster child for climate change. It is because the amount of rain falling in India has declined by 6 per cent between 1951 and 2015. What has been observed is a repetition of widespread unexpected droughts and massive downpours of water in different parts of the country. Thunderstorms, lightning and very heavy rainfall have become a cause of concern for weather scientists. They are trying to understand the underlying phenomena but their success has been limited.

The reasons that not much is clearly predicted about weather conditions in India are many but two of them are well known. Firstly, South Asian monsoons are one of the hardest natural processes to understand. Secondly, almost all the methods and mechanisms to predict weather are based on Western models. There is no indigenous method for India. As a result of this, most Indian weather forecasts are based more on experience than science. Some progress has been made but still, a lot of work has to be done.

Since India’s lifeline is monsoon, it is always beneficial to understand its basic phenomenon. The northern hemisphere tilts closer to the sun during May. As a result, the land heats and the air above this hot land rises up. Because of this rise of air upwards, trade winds change their course and flow in from the South Arabian sea pushing moisture-laden rain clouds up towards the Western Ghats. This phenomenon brings rains to Kerala and parts of South India. It is because of this phenomenon that every Indian start enquiring about the arrival of rain in Kerala after the middle of June every year.

Now curiosity may arise as to how the rain from Kerala spreads all over India. Winds find gaps in the Western Ghats. As these gaps are filled by wind currents, the air power spreads water-filled clouds across the Indian subcontinent. It is for this reason that environmentalists cry foul whenever government starts disturbing the ecosystem of these Ghats. Such people are saviours of the future, not an antinationalist crowd as is claimed by greedy moneybags.

Monsoons have become erratic over the last seven decades. This has happened because of the supercharged Indian Ocean which has warmed more than any other ocean. Since 1870, the Indian Ocean has warmed by 1.4 degrees Celsius. As a result of the hot ocean, the trade winds have weakened resulting in widespread droughts or excessive rains in the subcontinent. Some people on social media are seen to be over joyous about the plight of Pakistani people begging for flour bags but they forget that similar can happen to the whole subcontinent if monsoons fail even for one single year. We all are sitting on the edge of a dangerous cliff.

One painful thing about South Asia including India is that it is not prepared for sudden disasters. In Kerala, it is the local population that has created a system of watching the levels of rivers and rain with the help of village volunteers. These people keep a keen look on certain marked levels whenever it rains and warn people on WhatsApp to save themselves are their belongings. As far as the government is concerned, neither the Central nor the state has done anything worthwhile to mention. In India, the future of a political party has become more important than the lives of people hence, it is the blame game which appears more in the public domain than any concrete action plan.

Not many countries are taking global warming seriously except for superfluous talks by political leaders because the majority of the global population has become Godobsessed. People are fighting verbal wars to save the all-powerful, omnipotent gods of their own creation rather than doing something to cool the warming planet. There would be extreme weather events in the not-sodistant future because of huge changes in the oceanic atmosphere. Remember that oceans are a reservoir of continuous heat that supports all weather events including drought, cyclones and downpours across the globe. Scientists know this but they don’t fully understand these changes and their effects on monsoons.

South Asia is home to 60 per cent of the global population where people depend on rain for their survival including food and other resources of life. The majority of these people, including the urban well-off population, have no reserve food stock at home. This makes this part of the world highly vulnerable to climatic changes. With political bosses deeply engrossed in power games, it is the duty of every thinking citizen to start taking action at the community level.