After two straight years of drought, there's finally reason to hope for a normal monsoon this year. Most international models indicate that El Nino, the scourge of the monsoon in India, would dissipate by summer, providing neutral conditions for the rainy season in the country.
Although it is early days yet for predictions about how the monsoon would fare in 2016, the outlook as of now appears far better than the previous two years, say experts.
“The El Nino that adversely affected last year's monsoon is weakening and is likely to become neutral by the middle of the monsoon. There's even an outside chance that La Nina conditions, which actively favour the monsoon, may develop by the end of the rainy season,“ said D Sivananda Pai, lead monsoon forecaster of India Meteorological Department.
El Nino is a periodic condition associated with abnor mal warming of waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, which leads to changes in wind patterns that affect weather across the globe. Most El Nino occurrences lead to below normal monsoons in India.
Monsoon rainfall was 14% below the long-term average in 2015, and 12% in the red the year before that. El Nino played a spoiler in both the years -although in 2014, temperatures in the Pacific stopped short of El Nino conditions and started cooling midway into the rainy season. By contrast, last year's El Nino developed into one of the warmest ever recorded and is still continuing.
According to IMD's forecast, the El Nino may persist till June and then turn neutral by July . US and Australian agencies have released similar predictions.
Although it is early days yet for predictions about how the monsoon would fare in 2016, the outlook as of now appears far better than the previous two years, say experts.
“The El Nino that adversely affected last year's monsoon is weakening and is likely to become neutral by the middle of the monsoon. There's even an outside chance that La Nina conditions, which actively favour the monsoon, may develop by the end of the rainy season,“ said D Sivananda Pai, lead monsoon forecaster of India Meteorological Department.
El Nino is a periodic condition associated with abnor mal warming of waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, which leads to changes in wind patterns that affect weather across the globe. Most El Nino occurrences lead to below normal monsoons in India.
Monsoon rainfall was 14% below the long-term average in 2015, and 12% in the red the year before that. El Nino played a spoiler in both the years -although in 2014, temperatures in the Pacific stopped short of El Nino conditions and started cooling midway into the rainy season. By contrast, last year's El Nino developed into one of the warmest ever recorded and is still continuing.
According to IMD's forecast, the El Nino may persist till June and then turn neutral by July . US and Australian agencies have released similar predictions.
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