Simply unpredictable

IT BEGINS in the spring, when the sun's rays start to warm the Indian subcontinent. And by June 23, the summer solstice, as the longest day is known, earnest Doordarshan newsreaders recite the familiar litany: "Light or isolated heavy showers are likely in some places, in the next 24 hours. Heavy showers accompanied by thunder and lightning are also likely on the west coast.

Choking from within

Drainage congestion and increased rainfall runoff over eight centuries are increasingly choking Dhaka, the "unplanned Capital of Bangladesh", and this is leading to internal flooding, reports Panos Features, citing a recent study by S Dara Shamsuddin and Rafique Ahmed. The two researchers used data collected by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

Inflation fears hold back monsoon forecast

BECAUSE government meteorologists have been using the so-called Gowariker model to make fairly accurate monsoon predictions since 1988 (See table), it came as a surprise when the Indian meteorological department (IMD) announced recently it would end this practice for good.

More snow cover means less rain

MONSOON modeller A D Vernekar and his colleagues at the University of Maryland have worked out how the snow cover in Europe and Asia, especially in the Tibetan plateau, affects the Indian monsoon.

Monsoon drops in some areas, increases in others

THE AMOUNT of rain falling in various parts of India has changed over the years, decreasing in some places and increasing in others. K Rupa Kumar and his colleagues at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune report in a recent issue of the International Journal of Climatology that their analysis of data from 1871 to 1984 from 306 stations -- one from each of the districts in the plains -- points to a decrease in rainfall in 135 stations and an increase in 171 (see map). Thirteen of the decreasing trends and 18 of the increasing trends were deemed significant.

Weathermen flying high

INDIAN meteorologists are on cloud nine. They had forecast 92 per cent average seasonal rainfall for the country in the 1992 southwest monsoons - and the predictions came true almost to the last drop.

Dying springs

SPRINGS in the Himalaya are drying up on a massive scale, says a detailed study of a 59,723ha catchment area in the Kumaon.

Selling trees for rotis

THE morning hours in Barapal, near Udaipur, present a curious sight. Hundreds of headloaders crowd around the national highway looking for vehicles to transport charcoal or firewood to Udaipur. All of them are victims of drought. Selling wood illegally felled from government forests is their last resort for survival. Kesa Mina begins his day at two o'clock in the morning when, with a sack of charcoal, he stealthily treks down from his village, Goira, in the Aravalli hills, to Barapal. He keeps his

Green and surviving

IT is at a time like this that the famous Ralegan Siddhi village in Ahmednagar district -- the handiwork of a social worker, Anna Hazare -- stands out with a difference. It is green and it is surviving. There is indeed stress but no distress. The village has received only 150 mm to 175 mm of rainfall this year, about half its normal quota. But no one has migrated, and no one has gone out looking for jobs with the state's employment guarantee scheme. Hazare has got the villagers to make a percolation tank,

Don't blame it, on, nature

THE misery caused by this year's drought was unnecessary. Typical of India's weather, rainfall in several parts dipped below the normal last year but these fluctuations were small. Yet we failed to deal with the problems caused by this shortfall in rain.