The declining monsoon rainfall in Punjab over last two decades

Subject – Geography

Context – Punjab has received below normal rainfall this monsoon, which has withdrawn in the past couple of days from the state.

Concept –

Punjab has received below normal rainfall this monsoon, which has withdrawn in the past couple of days from the state. Not just this year, the state has seen a declining trend in rainfall during monsoon in the past two decades.
The only silver lining was that the rainfall pattern was good this year, which was witnessed after a long gap.
Less rain in the monsoon period leads to less annual rainfall in the state because around 79 per cent of the annual rain of the state takes place in monsoon period. Punjab’s annual rainfall is around 650 mm, which has decreased from around 800 mm in the 1980s.
Weather scientists say Punjab has not only been recording below normal rainfall but also deficient rainfall in the past two decades.
- Anything less than the normal, which can be even 1 per cent less, is called below average rain, but rainfall is categorised as ‘deficient’ when it is less than 20 per cent of the normal average.
This is a very bad trend for a state like Punjab where less rain means extracting more water from the ground for irrigation purposes, when the water table in 84 per cent of the state is already over-exploited.
According to Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), there were 35 years of deficient rain in Punjab between 1901 and 2017 (117 years) out of which 10 years of deficient rain were recorded between 2000 and 2019 itself, which means 29 per cent deficient rainfall years in just 17 per cent of over a century.