El Nino/La Nina and IOD impact on Kharif season crops over western agro-climatic zones of India

Abstract

Climate modes like ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) and IOD (Indian Ocean Dipole) produce an impact on the monsoon rainfall over India. Monsoon rainfall is extremely important for the agriculture of our country. The impact of these climate modes on monsoon rainfall thus in turn affects the rain-fed crops (Kharif). In this study, four Kharif season crops namely Rice (Oryzasativa), Maize (Zea mays), pulses and sugarcane (Saccharum o cinarum) are chosen over four arid/semi-arid agro-climatic zones of western India to study the effect of the climate modes on selected crops. The detailed analysis has been carried out to show the impact of El Nino/La Nina (phases of ENSO) and IOD years on the crop productions over the mentioned zones viz. (Central plateau & hills region; Western plateau & hills region; Gujarat hills and plains region; Western Dry region) from 1966-2011. Rice production has been largely affected during drought years associated with El-Nino. The production of Pulses shows marginal improvement during the neutral years or non-El Nino/non-La Nina. The Maize production seems to be better in La Nina years as compared to neutral years and worst in the El Nino years. El Nino years provides a minor impact on Sugarcane productions in different zones. La Nina years are well suited for sugarcane production in any zones of our study. Positive IOD years are associated with poor crop productions as compared to negative IOD years mostly in all zones due to the co-occurrence of positive IOD years with El Nino. The correlations between positive IOD and rainfall are much weaker as compared to the correlations between the El Nino and rainfall in the years of co-occurrences over the zones making El Nino much more in uential than positive IOD events.

Impact of Soil Moisture and Rainfall variability on Soybean Crop Yield during El Niño Episodes in Maharashtra, India

“…ENSO often in uence global precipitation patterns and seasonal temperature, consequently affecting crop yields (Cao et al 2023). Numerous studies have demonstrated the substantial in uence of large-scale climatic phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña on the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) and crop yields, particularly in rainfed areas (Bhatla et al 2023; D. Lal and Singh 2023). The precise in uence of ENSO on global crop yields remains uncertain and limited information is available (Iizumi et al 2014; Legler et al 1999;Perondi et al 2023;Shuai et al 2016).…”