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India’s southwest monsoon, the lifeline of millions of farmers across the country, might lose its intensity around July, the most crucial month for sowing of kharif crops and the one in which the country gets the maximum showers of the four-month period.
According to senior officials, worried agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is believed to have informed Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan about the break in southwest monsoon and directed him to take all precautions as the state has been reeling under the worst drought in nearly 40 years.
July receives around 28 centimeters or over 31% of the total rainfall during the four-month south-west monsoon season starting from June.
The Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) in its latest forecast has said that Indian summer monsoon is expected to be below normal because of a negative Indian Ocean Dipole, but the weak La Nina conditions might bring down the negative impact to some extent.
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is normally characterized by cooling of sea surface temperature in the south eastern equatorial Indian Ocean and warming of sea surface temperature in the western equatorial Indian Ocean. This is believed to have a negative impact on the smooth progress of the southwest monsoon in India. So far, the performance of monsoon 2013 has been satisfactory.
It arrived over Kerala around June 1, almost 2 days ahead of its expected arrival date and has been moving upwards in a smooth manner. The rains till now have covered almost all parts of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and are stationed around southern parts of Maharashtra.
“Till now the progress of the southwest monsoon has been rather satisfactory,” director of Long Range Forecast in the India Meteorological Department (IMD) D S Pai told Business Standard. He said the met office will come with its official region-wise and month-wise forecast for monsoon in 2013 sometime in the middle of June.
Private weather forecaster, Skymet in its latest forecast has said though overall rainfall in the country is expected to be normal during the June to September period at 102% of the Long Period Average, the rains are expected to be severely affected in north India in July.
Experts believe that a below par monsoon in July or for that matter even in June could do some serious damage to the kharif crops as bulk of the sowing takes place during these two months. The most important crops sown during the kharif season are paddy, oilseeds, pulses, sugarcane and cotton.
The monsoon rains are not only vital for kharif crops, but they also provide moisture for the next rabi sowing season.
“The biggest impact in such an eventuality would be on paddy, which is sown mostly in the month of July,” a leading agriculture expert said, adding that even many other crops are largely planted in June and July. India’s foodgrains production in the 2012 kharif season dropped by 2.31% to 128.23 million tonnes because of sudden break in rainfall during the monsoon season.
