El Niño

According to the World Meteorological Organization, El Niño is a natural phenomenon characterized by fluctuating ocean temperatures in the central and eastern ...

According to the World Meteorological Organization, El Niño is a natural phenomenon characterized by fluctuating ocean temperatures in the central and eastern parts of the equatorial Pacific, associated with changes in the atmosphere. The possible incidence of the El Niño phenomenon in the Caribbean could reduce hurricane activity in the Dominican Republic during the months of August and September, which are part of the Atlantic hurricane season, and would leave the country prone to drought. This was stated by the director of the National Meteorological Office (Onamet), Gloria Ceballos.

A new World Meteorological Organization (WMO) update, is warning, an El Niño event may develop in the coming months, following three consecutive years of an ...

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During the last four years, the southwest monsoon has been bountiful with normal and above normal rainfall from June to September.

While El Nino undeniably had an impact on deficient rainfall during 2014 and 2015, its impact is less clear on other episodes of below normal rainfall in the country. Similarly, in 2018, the IMD stated that the direct impact of the evolving El Nino on the performance of the monsoon as a whole was limited. However, the El Nino factor could be at the “neutral level” during the next three months and its real impact on the southwest monsoon can be assessed by April, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director general of the India Meteorological Department, told FE. During the last nine years, there were five years of normal and above normal rains (2016, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022) when India’s agricultural sector grew at an average annual rate of 4.6%. One is the El Nino factor associated with the warming of sea-surface waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which tends to weaken the southwest monsoon over India. The cooling of such waters is referred to as the La Nina factor, which results in a marked increase in rainfall.

El Nino has a high correlation with warmer summers and poor monsoon rains in India. Earlier, on February 9, the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) of the National ...

In years when there is strong El Nino coupling, it will have a strong impact on the atmosphere above the Pacific and on monsoons in India. But a committee of agricultural experts, set up by the agriculture ministry, assessed at its meeting on March 2 that the wheat crop in north-west India was “normal,” and much of it was unlikely to be affected by heat conditions in March, the Press Information Bureau said. In 2019, for instance, there was El Nino in May, June and July, but it was at the end of a cycle that had begun the previous year. But in 2015, when the temperature difference was 1.5 degrees centigrade, the rainfall deficit in India was 14 percent. India will be in a tight spot if poor rabi wheat harvest is aggravated by foodgrain production losses in the monsoon season. If they are favourable, the link between El Nino and monsoon will become weaker. Within the monsoon season there are variations brought about, say, by an eastward moving disturbance of clouds, rainfall, winds and pressure that traverses the planet at the tropics and returns to its initial starting point in 30-60 days. For these reasons, the Met Department makes two monsoon forecasts — one in April and the other in May or early June. In 2009, the southwest monsoon rainfall deficit was 26 percent and the worst since 1972. El Nino (or its opposite La Nina, defined by unusually cooler waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific) are yearlong events that begin in spring (March, April, May), peak in winter and end in the next spring. Positive IOD or warmer western Indian Ocean surface temperature compared to the eastern part, at the Equator, could offset the negative impact of El Nino. On February 23, Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate Change and Society said all its 18 dynamic models and all except one of the eight statistical models indicated a 56-59 percent probability of El Nino during those months.