{"id":14036,"date":"2021-02-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/current_affairs\/uncategorized\/22-02-2021\/decreasing-rainfall-trend-in-wettest-place-of-earth\/"},"modified":"2021-02-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T00:00:00","slug":"decreasing-rainfall-trend-in-wettest-place-of-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/current-affairs\/22-02-2021\/decreasing-rainfall-trend-in-wettest-place-of-earth","title":{"rendered":"Decreasing Rainfall Trend in Wettest place of Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In Context:<\/strong> A recent study that looked at the rainfall pattern in the past 119 years found a decreasing trend at Cherrapunji and nearby areas.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cherrapunji was previously the wettest place on earth but now Mawsynram is the wettest place in the world. Mawsynram receives over 10,000 millimetres of rain in a year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Key Highlights<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Decrease in trend of rainfall:<\/strong> The study highlighted that the rainfall pattern in the past 119 years (period of 1901\u20132019) found a decreasing trend at Cherrapunji and nearby areas.\n<ul>\n<li>The study noted that the annual mean rainfall for the period 1973\u20132019 showed decreasing trends of about 0.42 mm per decade.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Factors responsible for this trend:<\/strong> The phenomenon is driven by changes in the Indian Ocean temperature and conversion of forestlands and vegetation cover to croplands in the last two decades.\n<ul>\n<li>Satellite data analysis shows a reduction in the vegetation area in northeast India in the past two decades, implying that human influence also plays an important role in the changing rainfall patterns.<\/li>\n<li>The traditional way of cultivation known as <strong>Jhum cultivation or shifting cultivation <\/strong>and developmental activities in the region has contributed to deforestation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What are the major causes of concerns?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>North East India is mostly hilly and is an extension of the Indo-Gangetic Plains, the region is highly sensitive to changes in regional and global climate.<\/li>\n<li>Northeast India has the highest vegetation cover in India and includes 18 biodiversity hotspots of the world, and thus is important in terms of its greenery and climate-change sensitivity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Way forward &#038; Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Long term data needed: <\/strong>In North East India, long-term, dense and reliable daily rainfall data from IMD is infrequent due to remoteness of the region with low population density, extended periods of regional conflicts.\n<ul>\n<li>Now, India is planning to set up a Regional Climate Centre for the Third Pole (Himalayan) region during the next five years for weather and climate service up-gradation in the Himalayan region.<strong> <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Conservation of biodiversity: <\/strong>There is the need to conserve the vegetation or forest areas in the northeast.\n<ul>\n<li>Given the climate sensitivity of the region long-term plans for sustainable development are necessary.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Waste Reduction:<\/strong> Solid waste and waste water management strategies are inevitable to combat climate-induced changes of water bodies and ground water.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Know about the Rainfall Pattern:<\/strong> A better understanding of the <strong>physical mechanisms of the North East India\u2019s rainfall variability<\/strong> is crucial for developing advanced projections of future rainfall variability.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/science\/wettest-place-on-earth-sees-decreasing-trend-in-rainfall\/article33889697.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TH<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Context: A recent study that looked at the rainfall pattern in the past 119 years found a decreasing trend at Cherrapunji and nearby areas. Cherrapunji was previously the wettest place on earth but now Mawsynram is the wettest place in the world. Mawsynram receives over 10,000 millimetres of rain in a year. Key Highlights [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-14036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs","tag-gs1"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp-images.nextias.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/format=auto\/ca\/uploads\/2023\/07\/6523443current-affairs (1).jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}