Wettest place in the world drying out, locals say

18 Mar 2010 12:44:00 GMT18 Mar 2010 12:44:00 GMT ## for search indexer, do not remove
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Written by: AlertNet correspondent
An boy carries drinking water containers in the remote Indian town Cherrapunjee in 2004. Cherrapunjee once had the highest recorded rainfall on earth, but is now having to learn water conservation techniques as climate change takes hold. REUTERS/Jayanta Shaw
blog ## for search indexer, do not remove -->CHERRAPUNJEE, India (AlertNet) - There was a time when denizens of Cherrapunjee, reputed to be the wettest place in the world, invoked Lae Slat, the rain god, to stop the rain.
On occasions such as funerals, when gathering mourners was difficult because of incessant rain and wind that sometimes beat down for weeks on end, village elders would sit under a banana tree and pray for the rain to end, at least for one day, in one village.
"But now people are praying for more rain," says 46-year-old Robert Symper Kharmuti, who was born and brought up in the town and has seen its rainfall plunge over the last four to five years.
Climate change is bringing increasingly erratic weather around the world. In Cherrapunjee, a small town on the southern edge of the Khasi Hills in northeast India's Meghalaya state, that means dry times in a place where drenching weather has long been a way of life.
In 1974, Cherrapunjee recorded 24,555.20 millimetres of rain for the year, the highest recorded total for any place in the world. Local people traditionally have manufactured and worn knups - huge tortoise-shaped bamboo and palm leaf baskets that are worn over the head - to stave off the weather.
Today, though knup-makers are running out of buyers, and not just because more people can afford umbrellas.
"The knup was comfortable as both hands were free and people could work in the rains," Kharmuti said. "But now the knup-makers are facing a crisis as there is less demand for knups now as there is less rainfall. Moreover, people prefer stylish umbrellas and raincoats now."
Residents of Cherrapunjee are perplexed at the changing weather conditions, even if funerals have become a bit easier to plan.
TEMPERATURES UP, DISEASES FLARING
Outbreaks of unusual fevers and stomach problems are becoming more frequent as the rains dry up, they said. They blame the changing weather in part on rampant deforestation in the area and felling of trees to set up limestone kilns and illegal small coal mines.
When Sushil Pathak, a chemist, first came to Cherrapunjee in 1987, the temperature never rose about 17 degrees Celsius, he said.
"But now it goes up to 29 degrees. Suddenly it has become hot when it doesn't rain. Earlier the frequency of rainfall was more. It used to rain 30 to 35 days at a go," he said.
The changes aren't all bad news. For women, washing and drying clothes used to be an ordeal during the rainy season. Many used a bamboo basket placed over a heater or coal stove to try to keep washing dry.
Now, "it's easier as it does not rain that much and it's quite sunny," said Baiadamon Nongkynrih, one village woman.
The overall annual total of rainfall in Cherrapunjee does not show a drastic change, researchers say, but the continuous, predictable rain of the past has vanished in favor of more intense, episodic rainfall.
Dr K K Nath, an agro-meteorology specialist at Assam Agriculture University in Jorhat, has analysed rainfall data for the entire northeastern Indian region for the past 200 years, from 1800 to 2000.
"The number of years with sub-normal rainfall is increasing in frequency. Though there are some years with above-normal rainfall, their frequency is decreasing," he said.
DEFORESTATION MAY BE PLAYING ROLE
Nath believes some of northeast India's rainfall may be moving west, to the Indian state of Maharastra, where precipitation totals are increasing. Deforestation in Cherrapunjee and in Meghalaya state as a whole may be to blame, he said.
"Deforestation may be a possibility because convectional air current that form clouds may have become weaker," he said.
He however, feels that more research needs to be done on this complex phenomenon, which in some respects contradicts expectations about climate change.
"An increase in temperature implies more evaporation and more clouds, hence more precipitation, which is the general trend. But here these two things are moving in the opposite direction. There has to be an intermediary reason which we will have to analyse," he said.
Residents of Cherrapunjee say they used to see rain in every month of the year, including the driest months of November and December.
But "now we hardly have rains in November and December," said A.M. Roy Malngiang, one resident. "The grass is dried up and there is no water for new grass to come up. Local people accidentally burn the grass by dropping a lighted cigarette on it. Even a small spark can lead to a wildfire."
He is concerned by the growing scarcity of water.
"Earlier the natural springs had a perennial flow of water. Now the springs and streams have dried up and there is an acute water shortage. Sometimes there is no water to drink," he said.
LEARNING WATER CONSERVATION
Soon, he said, the people of Cherrapunjee will need to be educated in water conservation and water harvesting techniques. Already, the Ramkrishna Mission School at Cherrapunjee, with 1,050 students and teachers, has set up a reservoir for water harvesting.
"We collect rainwater from the roof through a pipeline. In the winter season, there is a scarcity of water and we use it," said Swami Shuddhabhabananda, an official of the school. "In the past few years, there has been a scarcity of water, though the public health department supplies water through a pipeline. But during winters this water supply becomes erratic."
Such examples are yet to be replicated in other places in the town. As Malngiang says, "we fear Cherrapunjee might one day become a desert."
Teresa Rehman is a journalist based in Northeast India. She can be reached at www.teresarehman.net
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