India’s counts of heavy and extreme heavy rainfall episodes during the monsoon season have increased over the past four years, the national weather agency said on Tuesday while releasing data on the 2024 monsoon.

The country had 473 episodes of “extreme heavy rainfall” defined as rainfall amount greater than 204.5mm over 24 hours compared to 421 episodes in 2024, 296 in 2022 and 273 in 2021, according to the data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

The extreme rainfall events during the 2024 monsoon occurred mainly over Gangetic Bengal, Bihar, coastal Karnataka, Konkan and Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana, Uttaranchal and western Madhya Pradesh, the IMD said.

The rainfall for the country as a whole during the 2024 summer monsoon season from June through September was “above normal”, or 108 per cent of its long-period average, the IMD said. The rainfall over the so-called “monsoon core zone” that accounts for most of the country’s rain-fed agricultural regions received 122 per cent of the long-period average.

Among India’s 36 meteorological subdivisions, two accounting for 9 per cent of India’s total area, received large excess rainfall, 10 subdivisions (26 per cent of the total area) received excess rainfall, 21 subdivisions (54 per cent of the total area) received normal rainfall and three subdivisions, Arunachal Pradesh, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh (11 per cent of the total area) received deficient rainfall since June.

The country had 2,632 “very heavy rainfall events” defined by the IMD as rainfall amounting between 115.6mm and 204.5mm during 2024. This count is higher than 2,321 in 2023, 1,874 in 2022 and 1,636 in 2021.

Weather scientists say the year-on-year increase in very heavy rainfall and extreme rainfall episodes is in line with multiple previous studies that have consistently shown a rising trend in extreme rainfall events in India from 1950 to 2023.