How Climate Scientists Predict India’s All-Important Monsoon Rains
Over the last decade, researchers at the country’s weather bureau have sought new and better ways to forecast the meteorological event that has profound effects on the world’s most populous nation.
Ample rains may boost production of crops like rice, soybeans, corn and sugar cane, helping to lower food prices and aiding the government’s efforts to cool inflation.
Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg
It’s a weather event so decisive for India’s economy that a former president once called it the nation’s “real” finance minister. But climate change is making the annual monsoon more difficult to forecast, and raising the stakes of getting those predictions wrong.
That’s why researchers at the India Meteorological Department have spent more than a decade fine-tuning a new way to divine when, and how much, rain will fall each year. The National Monsoon Mission, which set out in 2012 to move the nation over to a system that relies less on historical patterns and more on real-time, on-the-ground data gathering, is starting to pay off, potentially saving property, crops, and even lives.