Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2008CO200S

Risk Assessment and Forecasting of Indian Summer Monsoon for Agricultural Drought Impact Planning

Institute: Colorado
USGS Grant Number: 08HQGR0087
Year Established: 2008 Start Date: 2008-03-01 End Date: 2009-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $0 Total Non-Federal Funds: Not available

Principal Investigators: Rajagopalan Balaji

Project Summary: "The wild monsoon winds blow with abandon, swaying everything in their path..rivers flow and flowers bloom in celebration of the monsoon, as the world is transformed under its spell", notes poet S. P. Kurada in the PBS documentary "Monsoon". The author's sentiments about the monsoon are no exaggeration, for the socio-economic destiny of millions of people in the Indian sub-continent are bound head and tails to the timely arrival and an even spatial distribution of the Indian summer monsoon. Most parts of the sub-continent receive almost all their annual rainfall during the summer monsoon season (June - September). However, the amount of rainfall and its spatial distribution over the sub-continent varies significantly from year to year (also known as inter-annual variability) and also within the season (intra-seasonal variability). The monsoon greatly impacts, agriculture (more than 50% of which is rain fed), power generation (more that 50% of which is hydroelectric from rain fed rivers), and consequently, prices of essential commodities. Thus, it affects the entire spectrum of life - social, political and financial. Hence, understanding the variability of the monsoon (both inter-annual and intra-seasonal), being able to predict its strength and spatial distribution and the associated hydrologic aspects is of crucial importance to the well being of 1Billion of the world’s population. This served as a strong motivation for the proposed research. Planning for drought and food security is critical for India’s economy and societal well being. This fact is greatly underscored by the increasing population, scarce natural resources and significant dependency on the vagaries of the summer monsoon. We proposed a study to aid this planning effort by developing tools for intra-seasonal, subnational drought risk forecasting. To this end, the objectives were two fold – (1) to quantify the probability, on average, of the occurrence of agriculturally significant dry spells and (2) to provide a tool for predicting the risk each year based on prevailing conditions of the global climate system.