NEW DELHI: The El Niño weather pattern that triggers droughts in India is set to end between April and June, raising hopes of a normal monsoon after two poor rainy seasons.
Eight international climate models predict that one of the severest El Niños on record, which upended weather across countries for a few years, is now breaking up. Temperature levels in the equatorial Pacific are coming down to normal levels, which indicate a diminished El Niño. “That’s good for the monsoon,” said S Damodar Pai, the chief of India’s official monsoon forecast team. The India Meteorological Department will unveil its official monsoon forecast next month, Pai said.
The Narendra Modi government is banking on a normal June-to-September rainy season to tame a challenging agrarian crisis.
El Nino, or little boy in Spanish, is a weather glitch marked by an abnormal warming of the Pacific, whose effects ripple around the globe. Typically, it cuts rainfall in South Asia, including India, and triggers flooding in western US and South America.
The predictions of El Nino’s end have come from the UK Met Office, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Meteorological Service of Canada, EU Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Japan Meteorological Agency and Meteo-France, apart from the US’s Nasa Global Modelling and Assessment Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“The 2015–16 El Niño is now at moderate levels, and is likely to end in the second quarter of 2016,” an Australian weather bureau forecast said. These global forecasters agree that by July, El Niño conditions will be completely gone.
By July, the all-model average temperature in the Pacific is slated to drop to –0.3 °C, which would be the first “negative El Nino value” since February 2014. This means the Pacific would cool sufficiently enough to break the El Niño.
Last year, the weather glitch caused India’s monsoon to be deficit by 14%, leading to a crippling drought in 302 of India’s 640 districts. The monsoon is vital because two-thirds of Indians depend on farm income and nearly 60% of India’s arable land isn’t covered by irrigation networks.
The Indian Met office, currently preparing models to make the official monsoon forecast next month, is aware of the international assessment of El Nino, the official said. “The El Nino peak is over. Neutral ENSO conditions are likely in the monsoon months,” an official in the Met office said, requesting anonymity. ENSO stands for El Nino Southern Oscillation and is a wind-temperature pattern that gives rise to El Nino. A ‘neutral Enso’ denotes normal sea temperatures.
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), or the difference in sea-surface temperatures between the eastern and western equatorial Indian Ocean, is currently “neutral”, according to Indian and Australian observations. A neutral or positive IOD favours the monsoon too.