POLITICS: Another Good Monsoon for India – USSA News

By Paul Homewood

 

India’s summer monsoon is without doubt the single major event of the year for the country. A wet summer leads to increased food production, in turn boosting rural incomes.

India’s economy is still heavily dependent on agriculture, which accounts for a fifth of GDP and nearly half of the workforce. A good harvest therefore increases spending power in the wider economy and lowers food prices. On top of that, rainfall fills up the dams, boosting hydro electricity generation. In short, it generates economic growth and boosts the stock market.

It has therefore come as good news that this year’s monsoon, which runs from the beginning of June to the end of September, brought 8% more rain than normal, for the second year running.

Rice production is expected to increase 6.6% compared to last year, as rainfall has allowed a greater area to be sown. Wheat harvests are also projected to go up by 2.8% from last year’s already record outputs.

Contrary to the misinformation put out by the BBC a couple of years ago, India’s monsoons have not been drying up. On the contrary, droughts were much more severe in the 1960s to 80s when global temperatures were dropping.

The chart below from Monsoon Online runs to 2023, but I have updated it to this year in the graph below it:

https://mol.tropmet.res.in/monsoon-interannual-timeseries/

Indian meteorologists generally define drought as a rainfall deficit of 10% or more; the next chart plots these drought years. Since 2010, there have only been two droughts, both moderate, in 2014 and 2015.

By far the worst drought on record occurred in 1877, known at the time as the Great Famine, when up to an estimated 9.6 million may have died. Nineteen years later, another drought almost as bad left as many as 5 million dead.

Instead of fake drought stories , the BBC has now turned to “extreme rainfall” scares. Their article last month claimed:

“Half of the country is reeling under floods after extraordinary downpours, with Punjab facing its worst deluge since 1988. Between 28 August and 3 September, rainfall in northwest India was 180% above average, and in the south, it was 73%.

The climate crisis is changing the behaviour of the monsoon.

Scientists say one of the main changes is that there is a much higher amount of moisture in the air now, from both the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea due to warmer climate.

Also, in the past, monsoon rains were steady and spread evenly over the four months – June, July, August and September. But meteorologists say they have observed that rains now often fall in huge volumes within a small area in a short span of time after a prolonged dry spell.”

But the BBC fail to offer any evidence that this is not simply “weather”, which happens every year! About all they can claim is that Punjab had its worst deluge since 1988! I wonder caused that earlier one.

As the official data from the Indian Meteorological Dept shows, cumulative rainfall has closely tracked the normal throughout the season, gradually rising above average in the last six weeks. There has been no “prolonged dry spell”, as the BBC have falsely claimed, and no huge volumes in a short space of time.

https://mausam.imd.gov.in/imd_latest/contents/rainfall_time_series.php

It is estimated that about 1500 people lost their lives in floods this summer in India. But it is a sad fact of life that this sort of death toll occurs most years there.

Of course, where climate change is concerned, facts don’t matter to the BBC. Wet, dry or something in between, it is all the fault of global warming!