DROUGHT ASSESSMENT OVER GAYA AND EFFECT OF El-Nino ON IT

Abstract

Approximately 70% of Indian population depends on agriculture and after constantly inching towards better irrigation facilities, most of its part still dependent on Monsoon for cultivation. But due to extreme climatic conditions in recent years, drought has created mayhem in recent years. Year 2015 witnessed the one of worst Monsoon year because it’s main Monsoon months saw a rainfall deficient of 22.5%, worse than what IMD predicted before the starting of the season. The main reason of that deficiency was stated to be the hot currents originated from equatorial Pacific Ocean known as El-Nino. In this study, drought situation of Gaya region comprising of the highly promising for cultivation region of Barachatti, Goh, Manpur, Tikari and Rafiganj but now reeling under the clutch of persistent drought. It’s ironical that Gaya is said to be worst place in India to be a farmer. Only 45% of the crop area in Gaya has any access to irrigation—that too with ground water as the primary source. In this study, drought has been studied keeping the El-Nino effect as the primary focus and also keeping in mind the other oceanic phenomena like Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Study reveals that some areas of the Gaya received meagre amount of monsoon rain at all last year. Comparative study of El-Nino, IOD and rainfall of study region suggested some unprecedented observation. It suggests that drought in the study region is not only due to El-Nino but IOD has even bigger role to play in that. This misconception had been prevailing in the country that irregularity in the Monsoon was due to El-Nino only but here the picture is clear about this concept. The primary factor that is responsible for climatic irregularities is IOD in the Indian subcontinent, El-Nino only assist IOD in that.