(A boy enjoys a shower under…)
NEW DELHI: It's not just India that is baking. Globally, this seems to be one of the worst summers in recorded history. The global average temperature for May was the second hottest ever since 1880 - the year records were first compiled -- US National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC) has said. Only 2010 witnessed a worse May.
The NCDC said such a hot May was never recorded in the northern hemisphere.
No scientist will pin it on human-induced climate change - it is scientifically untenable to do so - but many affirm that these extreme weather phenomena is along predicted lines of rise in global temperatures.
For India, the looming possibility of El Nino dulling the monsoon rains in July-August only means things could get worse. There is half a chance that the El Nino phenomenon will pick up intensity and hit the tail of the monsoon. Thirteen of the 20 times El Nino has been recorded, it has dimmed the intensity of the monsoon, causing widespread drought.
Already, the northwest region of India has suffered a rainfall deficit worse than the rest of India.
But the misery of rising heat is being felt worldwide with "normal weather" systems in disarray. If large areas of the western Himalayas in Uttarakhand have suffered raging forest fires, so has the US - more than 8 lakh hectares have been engulfed in flames. The March-May period for the US has been the hottest ever.
Brazil is in the midst of its worst drought in five decades with more than 1,000 towns suffering. Heavy downpours and unheard of hail has hit China and flash floods have ravaged crops in Ethiopia.
The Eurasian snow cover extent has been recorded at its smallest ever for the month of May since such records were maintained for the first time in 1967. The cover was 2.67 million sq km below average in May, the US NCDC said.
The southern hemisphere, where winters prevail at the moment, too has been recording extremes like never before. The Australian winter has been exceptionally cold, with the fifth coolest winter minimum temperature in over half a century of record keeping. The Antarctic sea ice extent has gone above the 1979-2000 average. In contrast, the Arctic sea ice recorded a much smaller than average extent for the same period.
The developed world is naturally better placed to adapt and manage in such extreme weather though even the resilience of societies with better financial and technological abilities has been tested. For developing countries such as India, the lack of resources to deploy in cases of emergency is too evident. Floods in Assam are normal, but the intensity this time, with early heavy rains, has left all the districts unprepared.
While paddy cultivators across the country may still have a window period to sow in time for the Kharif crop to be reasonably normal, poorer farmers growing coarse grains have already lost substantial part of the sowing period across the country.
The prediction of an overall 'normal monsoon' would not assuage people as the variation across the regions is bound to leave some states parched and others flooded. The regional variation shown by IMD notes that the greatest deficiency in rain has so far been in states of Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and other northwest hilly states. Northeastern states on the other hand are suffering inundation with several of them reporting rivers in spate well before usual time.