# Ajayan | El Nino's tightening grip, suspected to escalate into a super event, appears to be manifest in Kerala, where the southwest monsoon first lands. Kerala recorded a 34% rainfall deficit in the monsoon's opening month, an anomaly climatologists describe as exceptional.
From June 1 to 30, Kerala received 427.3 mm of rainfall against the normal 648.2 mm, a deficit of 34%. But for Thiruvananthapuram, all the other districts had deficient rainfall. The steepest deficits were in Wayanad (68%) and Idukki (54 %), the state's principal highland catchments that feed its major reservoirs.
While the authorities attribute the power crisis to depleted reservoir levels affecting hydropower generation, the explanation is only partly convincing. Hydropower now meets barely 20% of Kerala's electricity demand, a sharp decline from the nearly 50% it supplied decades ago. With electricity consumption rising steadily, treating hydropower as the State's principal energy source is an increasingly untenable assumption.
El Nino, marked by the abnormal warming of surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, weakens the southwest monsoon by disrupting the atmospheric circulation that drives it. The warming alters pressure gradients and wind patterns, shifting the flow of moisture-laden winds. Under normal conditions, cooler Pacific waters help sustain trade winds that transport moisture towards the warmer Asian landmass, fuelling the monsoon.
A severe El Nino, now a growing possibility, can substantially weaken the Indian monsoon, depressing agricultural output and precipitating droughts, as it did in 1982, 1987, 2002 and 2015. Historical research also associates intense El Nino events with the catastrophic Indian famines of 1876–78 and 1899–1900. There are concerns that the current El Niño could persist for up to two years.
However, consultant climatologist Gopakumar Cholayil cautions against prematurely classifying it as a super El Niño. Its eventual intensity, he says, will depend on how the event evolves, with a clearer assessment likely only by September. Given the uncertainties inherent in climate models and the fact that the phenomenon is still in its formative phase, definitive conclusions at this stage would be premature, he adds.
Meteorologists identify another unmistakable signature of global warming in the increasing unpredictability of the monsoon, marked by brief spells of intense rainfall interspersed with prolonged dry periods. This "start-stop" pattern contributes to the seasonal rainfall deficit, while agronomists warn that it disrupts soil moisture accumulation and affects agricultural planning as southwest monsoon accounts for nearly 70 % of the country’s annual rainfall. The long dry spells also result in thunder and lightning which is not a feature of the southwest monsoon.
Traditional agricultural knowledge holds that unusually profuse flowering and fruiting in trees can foreshadow a drought. The abundant summer yield of mango and java plum (njaaval) this year, for instance, is often interpreted as nature's attempt to maximise reproduction in anticipation of environmental stress. However, scientists dismiss this as anecdotal rather than predictive. Gopakumar says there is no scientific evidence that trees can anticipate future climatic events. The unusually abundant flowering this year, he explains, is more plausibly the result of some stress experienced during an earlier season than an ability to "forecast" drought.