Monsoon turning an enigma again

According to climate experts, the monsoon pattern has been changing for the past eight years since 2002 when the critical rainfall in July registered the lowest.

“The monsoon current has a maximum of 4 per cent water vapour and 96 per cent dry air. If the moisture content gets sucked away by some manner, the monsoon will be weak and in recent years this has been a troubling phenomenon,’’ said Dr C K Rajan, Professor-in-charge, Chair for Climate Change at the Kochi-based School of Communication and Management Studies (SCMS).

He points out that July is the month when the nation gets to know how good the monsoon will be in a particular year. That is perhaps the time when the monsoon spreads to most parts of the country.

The monsoon takes 8 to 10 days after it breaks in Kerala to reach the Mumbai coast and 20 to 25 days to reach Delhi. However, an untimely cyclone system in the Arabian Sea could see the monsoon flows being driven north either along the west coast or away from it and turn a spoiler.

“As in 2009, the rainfall in recent years have all been unevenly spread throwing the month-wise distribution haywire. If the rain was short in June, it rains cats and dogs in July which results in floods,’’ he said.

The floods in West Bengal and Bangladesh last year were the result of such an unruly monsoon. He admitted that monsoon forecasting has been seriously impeded by such imponderables in recent years.