Early warning must also reach farmers without institutional support
Preventionweb
2026.11.09
For India, an El Niño year has usually meant a weaker monsoon. That relationship is a tendency rather than a rule, and there have been El Niño years that ended with normal rain, but the odds move, and they move against us.
This year the signal was unusually emphatic. The India Meteorological Department put the probability of El Niño developing during the monsoon season at 92%. The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave it a 96% chance of persisting through the coming winter, and several analyses placed it in the ‘ super El Niño territory’, comparable in strength to 2015. IMD’s seasonal outlook was for rainfall at 90% of the long period average, with a 60% likelihood that the season would close with a deficit.
The monsoon followed the warning, and Rajasthan felt it early. By the first week of September, the state was 21% short of normal rainfall, with 21 of its districts deficient and only two in surplus. That put the state in step with a country that recorded a 13.8% shortfall between June and August, and where cumulative rainfall stayed about 15% below the long period average through September. Elsewhere the deficit has already turned into formal declarations, as in Maharashtra, which has declared drought in 265 of its 358 talukas.
However, in the fields, the signal came earlier than any declaration. Nationally, kharif sowing lagged by about 16% on July 10, at 53.12 million hectares against 63.27 million a year earlier. Sowing recovered through July and August, but the rain did not. That gap is the lesson of this season. Every El Niño year will bring deficits and declarations, and it will also bring a forecast months in advance.
For India, an El Niño year has usually meant a weaker monsoon. That relationship is a tendency rather than a rule, and there have been El Niño years that ended with normal rain, but the odds move, and they move against us.
This year the signal was unusually emphatic. The India Meteorological Department put the probability of El Niño developing during the monsoon season at 92%. The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave it a 96% chance of persisting through the coming winter, and several analyses placed it in the ‘ super El Niño territory’, comparable in strength to 2015. IMD’s seasonal outlook was for rainfall at 90% of the long period average, with a 60% likelihood that the season would close with a deficit.
The monsoon followed the warning, and Rajasthan felt it early. By the first week of September, the state was 21% short of normal rainfall, with 21 of its districts deficient and only two in surplus. That put the state in step with a country that recorded a 13.8% shortfall between June and August, and where cumulative rainfall stayed about 15% below the long period average through September. Elsewhere the deficit has already turned into formal declarations, as in Maharashtra, which has declared drought in 265 of its 358 talukas.
However, in the fields, the signal came earlier than any declaration. Nationally, kharif sowing lagged by about 16% on July 10, at 53.12 million hectares against 63.27 million a year earlier. Sowing recovered through July and August, but the rain did not. That gap is the lesson of this season. Every El Niño year will bring deficits and declarations, and it will also bring a forecast months in advance.
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