M’laya, 4 others saw decreasing trend in southwest monsoon spells, LS told

SHILLONG, Dec 7: Meghalaya and four other states have shown a significant decreasing trend in southwest monsoon rainfall between 1989 and 2018, the Lower House was informed on Wednesday.
In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said that the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had carried out an analysis of observed monsoon rainfall variability and changes of 29 states and union territories for the past 30 years (1989- 2018).
He said a report by the IMD was then issued on March 30, 2020.
The IMD report, according to Singh, showed a significant decreasing trend in the southwest monsoon rainfall over the states of Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Nagaland.
He also informed that the IMD has launched Mausam App for dissemination of information about weather forecasts, Meghdoot App for circulation of Agromet advisories and Damini App for issuing lightning alerts.
The information on change in rainfall pattern is also shared with other stakeholders for its effective use and planning, Singh said.
He also informed that lightning incidents have caused the most deaths — 907 — so far this year.
According to Singh, disastrous weather events have caused 2,183 deaths across the country this year.
“Lightning was the cause of 907 deaths, followed by floods and heavy rains (804 deaths), thunderstorms (371), snowfall (37), heatwave (30), dust storm (22), gale (10), and one death each due to cold wave and squall. There were zero deaths due to cyclonic storms this year,” Singh said.
He said the country had witnessed 566 lightning events, 240 thunderstorms, 37 heatwave events, eight instances of gale winds and seven snowfall events.
In a reply to a separate question, the Union Minister said though there has been a noteworthy decrease in the death toll due to cyclones in recent years, containing damage and economic loss associated with the weather event was still a challenge.
Singh said various structural measures with multi-institutional support at national and state level are required to reduce damage due to cyclones. (With PTI inputs)