Will Agumbe Remain One of Wettest Places in India?

Rain evokes nostalgia for me. It brings back memories of rain in the countryside: of torrents drumming down on tiled roofs; water flowing down gutters; watching puddles become ponds; streams turning into rivers; mist rising off the warm, damp earth when the rain takes a break; and moss laden walls. It is easy to miss out on these in our hectic, urban lives where surfaces are either glass or tarmac. To relive these fond memories, I try to head out into the Western Ghats each monsoon. Last year, I travelled to Wayanad in Kerala and witnessed a ‘once-in-a-century’ flood replace land with water. I revisited Agumbe in mid-July 2019, after nearly a decade.

“Ee sala malene illa! Thumba kadime” (This season/time, there have been no rains. Very little). The words were on everyone’s lips, and echoed in my head too. The folks at the famous Doddamane homestay were worried about the lack of rainfall and so were those at the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS). I saw depleted streams with water that mirrored winter flows, exposed sand banks, roads that were still motorable — all signs of a monsoon that was yet to descend.

Agumbe is considered the second wettest place in the country after Mawsynram in Meghalaya, but in the first half of 2019 it had not received its normal rainfall. Agumbe receives about 200 mm of pre-monsoon rain from March to May. May had been the driest month with Agumbe receiving 0 mm of rain, when it normally gets at least 145 mm! Thirthahalli taluk, of which Agumbe is a part, had received a paltry 36 mm of rain as pre-monsoon showers (March-May), a deficit of 77 per cent. Meanwhile, Bengaluru in south-interior Karnataka had witnessed numerous thunderstorms and received above average rainfall. For the same period (Mar-May), Bengaluru North, where I reside, had received 176 mm of rainfall.

Meteorologists often refer to El Nino as one of the reasons for the delayed onset of the monsoon, but pre-monsoon showers are not believed to be linked. What is worrying for everybody living in the Agumbe area is how increasingly erratic and unpredictable rainfall patterns have become. In 2018, Agumbe was the wettest place in the country in the 45 days after the onset of the monsoon, ahead of Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, one the most famously wet places in India. But just a year later in mid-July 2019, the rainfall was woefully deficient. The ground on which Agumbe sits is partly lateritic which does not retain water very well, and the effects of a declining monsoon season will be sorely felt by everybody living there. The summer of 2019 was a particularly tough one, with water running scarce. It was hard to believe how different the landscape can be from one month to the next and from one district to the neighbouring one.

Just the previous week, I was paddling down the Sharavathi River in pelting rain, and torrential downpours typical of our humid tropics. The Sharavathi flows in the neighbouring district of Uttara Kannada, just north of Agumbe. There was water everywhere, the rivers were swollen and I was completely soaked throughout my journey. It was still raining when I left. A few days later, south of the Sharavathi in Agumbe in Shimoga district, I was greeted by overcast skies that would make way for sunshine, some sporadic light rain, and even clear, starry night skies — all unheard of in a normal Agumbe July. Even the infamous leeches of Agumbe’s rainforests seemed to be fewer in number, for they need very wet and damp conditions to thrive.

Gathering my bearings at the research station, I took a trail towards a stream I used to know, one that flowed untouched by farmland and settlements. I was surprised to see ankle-deep, clear water in the middle of July — the wettest month traditionally. The stream should have been uncrossable by this time of year, but I was able to hop across rocks and reach the other bank without much effort. The water looked beautiful, but this represented winter water levels — not the level in the middle of the monsoon.
Everywhere I went in Agumbe, the conversation invariably drifted towards rain, for rain defines the lives of the people of this region for half the year. People here are accustomed to days of unrelenting rain.

After waiting for two days to catch some rain, I headed down the ghats to Someshwara, one of the last remaining lowland evergreen rainforests. Someshwara lies in the coastal plains, to the west of Agumbe. At the Sitanadi Nature Camp, before I could catch a glimpse of the resident lesser fish eagle, the skies opened up and I witnessed the rain I had been hoping for.

It seemed like the rains followed me up the ghats, when I returned back to Agumbe a day later. And the next day, it was still raining when I awoke. I was curious to see how an overnight spell of rain would have changed the forest stream. The stream had risen, and I had to be careful as I was wading in waist-deep water. The rain had transformed the stream to a swift flowing channel with a sharp current. The rocks I had seen a few days earlier were submerged now, and I was amazed by how swift the transformation had been. Another rainy day and I wouldn’t be able to traverse this stream at all. This was the first good spell of rain Agumbe had received in weeks.

The landscape around Agumbe is witnessing drastic changes too. Deforestation in the form of conversion of land to areca and rubber plantations, fragmentation by roads and power lines, and an increasing population, has put a severe strain on a thin sliver of a protected area and the forests around it. Unlike the forest stream, streams that flow through these modified landscapes turn a rich brown in the monsoon as they are packed with silt due to erosion. As I packed my bags to leave, it was still raining with short windows of sunlight peering through an otherwise heavily overcast sky. The last I heard from the folks at ARRS a few weeks after my departure, it was still pouring ‘cats and dogs’ in Agumbe.

Massive global transformations in the form of emissions, deforestation, and exploitation have no doubt contributed to an increasing uncertainty over local weather patterns. However, local landscape-level changes are also to blame for the current erratic and unpredictable state of traditionally stable weather systems like the monsoon and pre-monsoon. In the coming years, the locals of Agumbe will have to brace themselves for changes in the weather. Whether Agumbe will continue to remain one of the wettest places in the country or not, will be determined not just by local actions, but also by the actions of people living thousands of miles away.