Subscribe
The monsoon is perhaps the only pan-Indian phenomenon that rivals our national love of cricket.
This year, 2026, is going to be a real weather kicker, with news of an El Niño brewing up in the Pacific.
Global weather is fast spinning out of control, and this results in an even more disturbed monsoon.
India remains far from monsoon-proof; we need to value every drop of rain, when and where it falls.
The monsoon is perhaps the only pan- Indian phenomenon that rivals our national love of cricket. Each year, we wait with bated breath to see if the monsoon will keep its date with Kerala, where it first makes landfall. Its progress inland, from the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, is closely tracked and every time there is a pause, many people’s hearts skip a beat. Farmers look to the skies for water for their newly planted crops; reservoirs need to fill again to irrigate fields and generate electricity; soil, plants and forests, shriveled by the summer heat, await the rains to pick them up.
Even we, nature-disconnected city dwellers, who seem to believe that drinking water comes from governments and taps, wait for the monsoon to arrive and bring relief from the intense heat. Few smells are as intoxicating as that of the first rain on parched earth. It is our moment of joy. But still, we do not fully understand the Indian monsoon; how it is interlinked to the global weather systems; and the implications as climate change alters the ocean currents, wind patterns and rain systems of the world.
This year, 2026, is going to be a real weather kicker. First, there is news of an El Niño brewing up in the Pacific, which has traditionally meant a weaker Indian monsoon. By now, it is certain that the El Niño will be a super or very strong event, as surface ocean temperatures are expected to exceed 2oC over the long-term average. This intense ocean heat spike is expected to destabilise atmospheric pressure systems and jet streams and thereby supercharge weather events globally. All this would come on top of the longer-term effects of climate change, which are already pushing temperatures higher and making weather patterns more volatile. So, all in all, 2026 is expected to be a sizzler of a year.
El Niño this year is expected to intensify between June and August. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is predicting a below-average monsoon. One weather event that can modulate its worst impact is the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) system—measured in terms of the temperature difference between the western Indian Ocean (off East Africa) and the eastern Indian Ocean (off Indonesia). A positive IOD, with warmer waters on the western-front, can counteract the worst of a strong El Niño. This year, however, IMD predicts neutral IOD conditions, with a possible shift towards a positive IOD only towards the end of the monsoon season. This is not good news.
And this is not all. Global weather is fast spinning out of control, and this results in an even more disturbed monsoon. On the one hand, we see an increase in extreme rainfall events because of climate change. In the past few years, our data shows that India has had close to one extreme weather event a day; heavy and extreme rain, floods and landslides occurred on 68-95 per cent of days. In other words, we are getting more rain in fewer days. This is bad news as it leads to floods, and if we do not hold the rain, use it to recharge surface and groundwater reservoirs, it will exacerbate water shortage and drought.
On the other hand, Western Disturbances (WD)—the moisture-laden winds that come from the Mediterranean across west Asia, bringing rain and snow to north India—appear to be changing. Instead of winter months—witness the lack of snow in the Himalayas—they are increasingly arriving in summer and even remain active during the monsoon season. This does bring welcome rain during peak summer months, but also disrupts and destroys the harvested crop. In the past few years, WDs have led to collisions with monsoon low-pressure systems and brought intense rainfall events and cloudbursts. This is what led to the horrific flash floods and landslides in the Himalayan states last year.
The world’s weather does not have boundaries—the wind and ocean current systems that drive rain, heat, snow and cold are all interconnected. These global systems are being impacted by another global crisis, greenhouse gas emissions, that come from individual countries but fill the global atmosphere. So, as climate change forces temperatures to rise, the Arctic warms, weakening polar jet streams. That, in turn, reduces temperature difference between the equator and the poles, and influences WDs which bring unseasonal rain to India.
Why does this matter? You may ask. After all, irrigation and engineered water systems have reduced our dependence on rainfall. But the fact is India remains far from monsoon-proof. We need to harvest rain to grow food—the bulk of India’s agriculture is rainfed; even irrigated farming depends heavily on groundwater. Over 70 per cent of drinking water is also sourced from groundwater. It is for this reason that the true finance minister of India, the Indian monsoon, demands our full respect. We need to value every drop of rain, when and where it falls.
