India’s weather office warns of below-normal rainfall in August and September due to El Niño, raising concerns over monsoon strength amid mixed climate signals and uneven regional impact.
India’s weather office has warned that August and September are likely to bring below-normal rainfall, underscoring the strain that El Niño is still placing on this year’s monsoon. In a press release on August 9, the India Meteorological Department said some parts of peninsular, central and northern India may still see normal to above-normal rain, but that local improvement is unlikely to make up for the wider deficit.
The department said the expected damage from El Niño could be partly softened by the chance of a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, a climate pattern in which warmer-than-usual waters in the western Indian Ocean and cooler waters near Indonesia can strengthen the south-west monsoon over India. The Bureau of Meteorology and the World Meteorological Organization both describe the same ocean shift as a key factor in altering winds and moisture across the region.
The warning follows a July 29 IMD assessment that the east and north-east had suffered the sharpest rainfall shortfall so far this season, even though Assam has still had spells of heavy rain. That uneven pattern has left some areas relatively better off while reinforcing concerns that the monsoon’s overall performance remains weak.
There is, however, some evidence that the farm sector has so far weathered the season better than in the two previous El Niño years. On July 31, the IMD said kharif sowing had stayed broadly steady through July 31, though cotton and oilseed acreage had fallen. It also noted that agriculture’s share of gross value added in FY26 was at its lowest level in at least 15 years, even as crops still account for more than half of agricultural GVA.
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