Monsoon season ends with 12% deficit rainfall in region

GUWAHATI: The four-month monsoon season ended in the country on Thursday with below normal rainfall over the eastern and northeastern states. The 12% deficit rainfall could impact farm output or crop yield this harvest season.
At the end of the four rainy months, the eastern and northeastern parts of the country received 1,246.2 mm of rain in total against a normal of 1,410.4 mm, marking a deficit of 11.6%, the highest in the country.
Three met subdivisions of the northeast, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram & Tripura (NMMT), Arunachal Pradesh and Assam-Meghalaya are among the six met subdivisions in the country which got deficit rainfall.
The country is divided into four homogeneous rainfall regions — Northwest India, South Peninsula, Central India and Northeast and the Monsoon Core Zone — which account for most of the rainfed agriculture regions.
According to the IMD update, seasonal rainfall is below normal over East and Northeast India as long period average is 88%. The IMD considers normal rainfall to be 96-108% of the long period average (LPA) of the seasonal rainfall over the country for the period 1961-2010, which is 88 cm.
Monsoon in Assam ended with 22% deficit rainfall as the state received 1,384.5 mm of rainfall as against the normal figure of 1,766.2 mm and the resulting deficit was the highest in three years. In 2018, the state had witnessed a 26% rainfall deficit. The state recorded surplus rain of 11% last year, causing heavy floods across the state. Regional Meteorological Centre meteorologist Sunit Das said deficit rain is nothing ‘unusual’ and it is the ‘natural variability’ of the southwest monsoon. However, experts have attributed the rainfall deficiency in the northeast this year during the monsoon to climate change. “IMD had predicted rainfall in NE may be below normal this year. This is the sixth time since 2010 that Assam has witnessed rainfall deficit over 20%. It is not unusual,” he said.
Farmers are apprehensive that their crops will be affected as they had to delay the sowing and transplantation operations due to less rainfall.
“We find that there is going to be some amount of shortage in production or yield. But whether it is really going to affect crop production can only be known after the details of Crop Cutting Experiment (CCE) are made public. As of now it is a mixed response. The monsoon improved in the later part which helped,” senior state agriculture official Vinod Seshan told TOI. CCE data will be available on October 15. CCE is conducted to estimate crop production. The state produces the highest paddy among the northeastern states and is known for its rich rice genetic diversity. As per the Assam directorate of economics and statistics data, in 2019-20, about 81.21 lakh metric tonnes (81,21,528) paddy was produced in the state.