Needed: foresight, better forecasts

The Met department’s long-term predictions did not warn farmers of the recent deluge and the damage it would do to their crops

In the first week of July, the country was inundated with photographs of flooded cities and people wading through knee-deep water. For agriculture, it would mean inundated fields and crop damage. In June, though the country had 7 per cent excess rainfall as a whole but reports from the field suggest crop sowing is lagging. It just means that the general long-term forecasts and broad averages for country as a whole does not capture the agriculture scenario.

In the last week, there were seven sub-divisions that had 100-260 per cent more than normal rain. The farmers in these areas had no idea what was coming — the long-term forecasts given by the Met department do not show excess rainfall in any of the regions of India.

In the last few years, the medium (3-4 days) and the short term (1-2 days) forecast has improved considerably. Long term forecast (a month) that captures the regional scenarios still requires work. For now, the Met department issues two forecasts in the entire monsoon season.

A medium-term forecast means the farmers can be advised on limited areas — pest and disease control and irrigation schedule. It is the long-term forecast that can help universities gear up with right varieties of seed and prepare a sowing schedule for farmers.

The forecast for the country as a whole is not useful because even though the country may receive normal rain, certain areas go dry or have excess rains intensified over a few hours.

This year’s regional forecasts do not reflect the trend this monsoon: IMD has said north-west India would receive rains amounting to 90 per cent of its long-period average (LPA), north-east India 98 per cent of its LPA, central India 96 per cent of its LPA and south peninsula 94 per cent of its LPA. This indicates even distribution of rainfall.

As seen in the map, there are large parts of the country that have had nearly 200 per cent of what was expected. According to experts, a state-level or sub-divisional level, long-range forecasts with reasonable accuracy is needed.

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Some institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institute of Tropical Metreology and the National Centre for Medium Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) are working on Extended Range Weather Forecasting System. “It is a complete shift in approach from just looking at numerical models to using multi-model ensembles,” said L.K. Rathore, from NCMRWF.

This will enable temperature as well as rainfall forecasts for different agro-climatic zones every fortnight or every month. Till then, the agriculture scenario does not match the “normals” of the country as a whole.

The damage to standing crops because of this week’s rain is yet to be assessed, the crop data recorded by the crop division of the agriculture ministry show that summer crops like rice, coarse cereals, mainly jowar, bajra, and maize, sugarcane and jute are lagging in area coverage. Cotton has marked an increase in area coverage to 1.53 million hectares from 1.47 million hectares of the previous year. Pulses too have increased in area coverage.

Cultivation of crops was delayed on account of delay in the movement of the monsoon over the mainland. The Southwest monsoon arrived at the Andaman Sea on May 11, almost 10 days earlier than the normal date and it also touched the Kerala coast four days earlier on May 28. By May 29, it covered entire coastal Karnataka and some parts of south interior Karnataka and south Tamil Nadu.

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After this, there was hiatus in the advancement of the monsoon for about a week due to formation of the super cyclone, ‘Gonu’, over the Arabian, as per the assessments made by the IMD.

The monsoon thereafter made some advancement from June 8 to 18, but was running behind schedule in many parts of the country. Again, there was a halt to the monsoon progress for about nine days and it recovered on June 26. Despite the delay, the monsoon covered the entire northwest ahead or ahead of normal. And then came the deluge in central and peninsular India this week.

These aberrations are difficult to capture without IMD refining its long-term forecasts for the benefit of the farmers.