Update on the South Asian Monsoon

The seasonal landslide pattern in South Asia remains very substantively below the long term mean this year - to date at least the monsoon is failing. The level of the problem is illustrated rather well by this map of the monsoon season rainfall anomaly for India, from Monsoon Online:

The result is that the number of landslides in South Asia is very much below average, which is of course good news.

It is interesting to compare this year with 1997. This is part of a press release from 26th June 1997, put out by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology:
"Unfavourable conditions trigger worry over south-west monsoon (26 June 1997)
Weather experts at the India Meteorological Department are keeping their fingers crossed over the performance of the south- west monsoon, as the waters of the Pacific Ocean are getting warmer. Warming of the Pacific is of significance since it means that there is no hope, at least for the time being, for the El Nino factor, which has a important influence on the monsoon, to become favourable. On the contrary, it only meant that it could have a more adverse impact than what was envisaged a month ago. To add to the problem, the Southern Oscillation, which is another global climatological phenomena that influences the monsoon, has also become more unfavourable. While El Nino is a reflection of the warming of some regions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, Southern Oscillation is an index of difference of pressure between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. El Nino is considered favourable if the temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, particularly off the coast of Peru are low, and Southern Oscillation is considered to be advantageous if the atmosphere pressure in the Pacific Ocean is less than that in the Indian Ocean. The officials have, however, not given up hope on the ground that there was still a long way to go before the monsoon, which is active for four months, comes to an end in September. "

Interestingly the monsoon was 8-10 days late across most of the country that year. In the end the monsoon rainfall total was slightly above average, but characterised by very heavy rainfall, which caused floods and landslides, in late August.

1997 was of course the start of the largest El Nino in the last 60 years. It is unsurprising that the monsoon is currently showing a similar pattern as a new El Nino develops. The landslide pattern is apparently reflecting this.