WARNING SIGNAL
BHAGWAN LAL Nitharwal is a big farmer in Gudaliya village of Chaimu tehsil in Jaipur, Rajasthan. This year he harvested 300 quintals (1 quintal equals 100 kg) of wheat and barley each from his 16-hectare (ha) farm. But before he could move the grains from the farm, a sudden hailstorm on April 25 night soaked all his produce. By the next day, the grains had turned dark. Watermelons he grew on 1.6 ha also got ruined.
That night, another farmer in Chaimu Mool Chand lost most of his green chilly, cucumber, tomato and bottle gourd he had grown on 1.6 ha. “I had spent `2 lakh on the crop and could have brought home `5 lakh,” he says.
“I have not seen a hailstorm like this in my life,” says Ashok Yadav, 30, of Mauli Khas village in Siddharthnagar district of Uttar Pradesh. In the state’s Banda district, rabi crop is grown on 324,000 ha, says A K Singh, deputy director, agriculture department. Of this, black gram is grown on 100,010 ha; the rest is wheat. When sudden rains came, some of the wheat had been harvested and labourers were still threshing it. Though losses are not huge, it will affect the grain quality.
March and April were bad for farmers of 13 states and Union territories in northern, central and east-central India. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recorded 77 per cent more than normal rainfall in the country between March 1 and March 19. Bihar received nine times the usual rainfall, while Jharkhand got eight times more. Uttar Pradesh and Delhi recorded 698 per cent and 621 per cent excess rains respectively. Chhattisgarh got excessive rains in 25 of its 27 districts.
A large part of India lost a substantial amount of ready wheat crop. Bihar, the worst hit, also lost
and mustard crops. The state grows pulses in 5 lakh ha, of which is grown in 1.5 ha. This year, production may drop by 30 to 50 per cent, says J S Mishra, head of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Patna. Muzaffarpur’s litchi, known for its size, flavour and taste, may also suffer. Litchi is sensitive to variations in temperature, rainfall and humidity.
Bihar has sown corn in 278.437 ha. They are all drooping after the hailstorm. This will impact production. Honey may also slip by 25 to 40 per cent. During mustard season, honey boxes that gave 10 kg per year, are giving only 2 to 6 kg.
Experts blame it all on the western disturbances—the extra tropical storms that originate in the Mediterranean and travel to India bringing sudden rainfall. “The unusually warm temperature over Eurasia and the warm-cool pattern over the Atlantic Ocean worked together to favour western disturbances during pre-monsoon,” says Raghu Murtugudde, climate scientist at the University of Maryland, US. “These would otherwise bring dust storm but they brought enough moisture to produce rain and thunderstorm when they met warm air over western India,” he adds.
IMD, the country’s only public meteorological organisation, does well in predicting large-scale weather phenomena like high temperatures and heat waves. But it fails to predict smaller incidents like storms that bring rain, hail, dust and lightning such as those that occurred in March and April, says Murtugudde. Small wonder, despite India having one of the world’s best agrometeorological advisory systems, the farmers were left in the lurch.
RICH INFRASTRUCTURE
The country has about 13,000 automatic weather stations (AWSs)
and 8,000 automatic rain gauges (ARGs), states Delhi-based nonprofit Centre for Science and
Environment in its report, “Agrometeorological Advisory Services in India—An Assessment”.
A network of observatories collects data focussing on agriculture (see ‘Centre’s data collection network’ on Five meteorological satellites—Kalpana-1, INSAT3A, INSAT-3D, INSAT-3DR and Megha-Tropiques—help IMD provide countrywide weather warning bulletins, with a five-day lead time. This apart, IMD uses Global Forecast System developed by the US National Centre for Environmental Prediction, which provides forecast for a minimum 144 sq km area.
IMD DOES WELL IN PREDICTING LARGE-SCALE WEATHER PHENOMENA LIKE HIGH TEMPERATURES AND HEAT WAVES, BUT FAILS TO PREDICT SMALLER INCIDENTS LIKE STORMS THAT BRING RAIN AND HAIL, SAYS RAGHU MURTUGUDDE, CLIMATE SCIENTIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, USA