Study of historic weather trends and irrigation management in two states of India and its impact on agriculture
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach that helps to guide actions needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems to effectively support development and ensure food security in a changing climate, as defined by FAO. CSA is not a set of practices that can be universally applied, but rather an approach that involves different elements embedded on-farm and beyond the farm and incorporates technologies, policies, institutions and investment.
Climate-smart agriculture helps in the following ways.
- sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes;
- adapt and build resilience to climate change
- reduce and/or remove greenhouse gas emissions, where possible.
Climate-smart agriculture is not a new agricultural system, nor a set of practices. It is an innovative approach for charting development pathways that can make the agriculture sectors more productive and sustainable and better able to contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Water management has a critical role in climate-smart agriculture. It is important to analyse the impacts of climate change on the availability of freshwater resources for agriculture and consider possible water management options for adaptation to climate change and for climate change mitigation.
In this article, we will look into the historic weather trends in India (covering two states), and its impact on agriculture, especially irrigation management. This will also help understand why it is important to follow sustainable agricultural practices.
Historic Weather Trends in India and its impact on agriculture (Irrigation management)
We have been for long talking about climate change, and its impact on various aspects, one important aspect being food production.
Climate change refers to a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer). Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent man-made changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.
Weather in Karnataka
Karnataka has a tropical monsoon climate. The main characteristics of this climate are hot and moist summers and cool and dry winters. But there is diversity in the climate of the state. The main reasons for this diversity are the influence of geographical location, oceans, physical features, vegetation, and monsoon winds. Hence, the annual temperature and distribution of rain are not the same all over the state.
Between 2001 and 2019, the state has experienced a drought of varying severity for 15 years. Some talukas have been drought-affected consecutively for more than five years.
In 2016, out of 176 talukas in the state, 139 were drought-affected in the kharif and 162 talukas were drought-affected in the rabi season. Similarly, in 2018, about 100 talukas were drought-affected in the kharif season and 156 talukas in rabi season. A majority of districts in the North Interior Karnataka region are the ones that were subjected to severe drought conditions. On the other hand Karnataka also experienced severe floods in 2005, 2009, 2018 and 2019.
Weather in Maharashtra
Maharashtra has typical monsoon climate, with hot, rainy and cold weather seasons. Tropical conditions prevail all over the state, and even the hill stations are not that cold. Dew, frost, hail can also happen sometimes according to the seasonal weather. Rainfall starts normally in the first week of June. July is the wettest month in Maharashtra, while August too gets substantial rain. Monsoon starts its retreat with the coming of September from the state.
The state receives rainfall mainly during the southwest monsoon season (June to September). All the important rivers like Godavari, Bhima and Krishna which originate from the watersheds of the Ghats flow east across these drier regions and contribute to their economic benefit
We at GramworkX have been studying the weather trends across different regions of the two states to understand the irrigation requirements and trends over the past years
Weather data in Maharashtra and Karnataka
Karnataka (KA): We have over 5 years of data from 2014–2019 from approx 51 Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) across the state.
Maharashtra (MH): We have over 5 years of data from 2014–2019 from approx 80 AWS across the state.
Feature trend in MH vs KA
Key observations
- Maximum temperatures across the two states follow similar patterns. While KA recorded significantly higher average max-temperatures in 2016, MH faced the same in 2017.
- Minimum temperatures have not carried much across the years, but KA consistently sees lower average min-temperatures than MH.
- Karnataka sees significantly higher relative humidity across the years. MH has been seeing a decrease in RH across the years.
- Average wind speeds of MH is higher than KA across the years.
While we do not see significant changes in weather patterns over the 5 year period, It is important to track these parameters, since they highly impact the irrigation pattern and requirements across the regions. Evapotranspiration — the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and other surfaces and by transpiration from plants.
Evapotranspiration (ETo) of Maharashtra has been consistently higher than Karnataka till 2018, this is primarily seen because Average temperatures in MH is greater for the above period, and Wind Speed was also higher, while KA had a higher average humidity.
In the period post 2018, average temperature of KA is higher than MH, and also the wind speeds. Even though KA had a higher average humidity, the evapotranspiration in KA was higher than MH. More importantly MH saw a steep decrease in ETo values compared to the previous years.
Results & Final Discussion:
As shown in the plots above, water loss and consequently the irrigation requirements are in turn highly influenced by the trend observed in micro-climatic conditions. The period from 2014–2018 showed that the ETo values were higher in Maharashtra than Karnataka owing to higher temperatures, wind speed and lower relative humidity. But from 2018 and we still observe this today, the ETo trend is significantly reversing in these two states due to the changes observed in the overall climate — Karnataka regions getting more hotter and windy. Moreover, in Maharashtra, within this 5 year period, we observed a drastic reduction in the ETo value, indicating the need to lower the irrigation quantity.
A typical farmer needs to be wary of these varying interstate and intra-state climatic conditions and should be able to adapt his/her farming practices accordingly. We at GramworkX are trying to educate more and more farmers everyday about the ways through which they can incorporate climate smart agriculture to counter yield reduction due to climate change. Moreover, by introducing data-backed solutions in the agri-tech sector, we plan to get more farmers onboard in this CSA movement with the mission of making every Indian farmer self-sustainable in the upcoming time.
This is where GramworkX comes as a facilitator for climate smart farming among farmers and equipping them with tools to enhance their agricultural practices. We strongly believe in incorporating analytics, automation, product and process innovation for better resource utilisation and help increase the productivity in the field of agriculture.
Want to know more about us? — Connect with us at hello@gramworkx.com
