DRY DAYS AHEAD!

As the half of monsoon season has passed without bringing any substantial rain, people are demanding of repeat of artificial rain experiment. Even though the situation seems sufficient to do so, scientists are saying otherwise. It means that for city, the dry days are ahead.

Almost one and half month has passed since the onset of monsoon in Maharashtra. In the period, a total of 172 mm. of rainfall has been recorded in the city. According to India Meteorological Department data, the accumulated seasonal rainfall in Pune sub-division since 1 June to 13 July was 100 to 200mm. while the normal readings are 200 to 400 mm. It is put in the deficient rainfall category which means the rainfall are 20 to 59 percent below normal. For the city itself, the rainfall has been 38 mm below the normal. Besides Pune, many parts of the state are reeling under the scarcity of rains.

According to Dr. Medha Khole, Director, IMD, Pune, "Even though clouds are gathered in the sky, they require semantic situations like trough, pressure to cause rainfall. The elements which cause rains in Maharashtra are low pressure belt in the bay of Bengal and Off-shore trough on the western sea shore. No such situation is envisaged immediately therefore rains are hardly predicted." Dr. Khole said that even though Met department issues forecasts for three or four days, forecasts for 48 hours are found accurate."

Demands for artificial rain has been growing from various quarters as a solution to this problem. But meteorological experts are not sure. Dr. A. B. Mujumdar, Deputy Director General of Meterology (Weather Forecasting), IMD Pune said, "We do not have sufficient data to say that the artificial rain experiment will be useful. We do not know whether the seeding (spreading of chemicals from special aeroplanes) will be effective in the experiment. There has to be data to support such an idea. Unless this data is there, the experiment will be pointless."

According to Dr. Mujumdar, the artificial rain experiment is a continuos process and it can not bring results in isolated incidences. "People are desperate now to have rains that is why they are making demands. Where is the data to prove that last experiment in 2004, named PrakalpVarsha was successful."

Dr. J. R. Kulkarni, Scientist E at Indian Institute of Tropical Meterology said, "To have rains, clouds are necessarily required. But they should have specific properties. We have to determine whether the seeding will have effect for which radars are required. It will take time as radars have to come, a suitable agency to carry out the experiments has to be found out." All these things depend on whether the state government contacts IITM, which had helped government four years ago to carry out PrakalpVarsha.

According to Dr. Kulkarni, IITM had carried out the experiments in artificial rains for elevan years ago. This was twenty years ago. But now many a situations have altered so experiments have to be carried out again.