Monsoon 2026, El Nino & Climate Signals
The 2026 monsoon is running below par but not collapsing, and mid-August showed how much that average hides. Parliament was told on 12 August 2026 that cumulative rainfall stood 12 percent under the long period average on 2 August - close to IMD's April and May calls of 92 and then 90 percent. June was 35 percent short with seven districts in ten in deficit; July finished 1 percent above average nationally, yet 47 percent of districts stayed deficient. Then, in the second week of August, a Bay of Bengal system put Chhattisgarh under a red warning and pushed Odisha's rivers past their danger marks. El Nino, weak in June and now moderate, is the brake; the Indian Ocean Dipole stays neutral and offers no counterweight.
- monsoon 2026
- El Nino
- IMD
- NOAA CPC
- AMOC
- ENSO
- rainfall deficit
- kharif
Read the full living note — free
The complete note in both exam lenses (UPSC analytical / fact capsule), its full version history, and “what changed since you last read” — plus tonight's quiz.
Open in CA·WikiAI-assisted, human-reviewed · sourced from PIB, RBI & ministries · editorial policy
More living notes in Environment & Ecology
- India's Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) RegimeAdded the 22 August 2026 release: ₹2.82 crore to 27 State boards, 3 UT councils and ICAR-IIHR, the first microbial-strain payment with a 30 percent institute share, and the cumulative total now at ₹185 crore (up from ₹166 crore).
- Snow Leopard Conservation in IndiaNew card: India presents its snow leopard science — counting, radio-collaring and genetics — at a Russia-India roundtable in Moscow under the Irbis-IBCA partnership.
- India at UNCCD COP17Added India's four ministerial interventions at COP17: the 21.76 million-hectare restoration record for 2011-2020, the 26 million-hectare Bonn Challenge pledge, the rangelands, drought-resilience and land-finance positions, and a UNCCD backgrounder.
- Elephants - Census & Human-Wildlife ConflictAdded the 13 August 2026 national elephant event at Visakhapatnam - the Gaj Gaurav Awards 2026, and, more substantially, a Rs 500 crore Regional Action Plan that puts human-elephant conflict in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka on a single landscape footing rather than four separate ones. New too: Project Elephant's 1992 start as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, the 30 Giant Steps record of 2020-2026, the 23rd Steering Committee's Phase II conflict study across five States, Andhra Pradesh's H.A.N.U.M.A.N. wildlife-care units, and a school campaign that reached over 20 lakh children.
- India's Groundwater ResourceIndia draws 247 billion cubic metres of groundwater a year against 408 BCM that can safely be extracted — a 60.63 percent extraction stage, exceeded in nine States and UTs and in 281 districts.
- Restoring India's Degraded ForestsTracks how India repairs degraded forest land: 1,84,467 hectares eco-restored under the Green India Mission across 17 states and one Union Territory, the urban Nagar Van push on CAMPA money, and the 45-species invasive-plant list states work from.