India: Weather 2019: An extreme forecast
By Nidhi Jamwal
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The first big challenge of the year is drought. Officially, six states — Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Rajasthan — have already submitted a memorandum to the Centre seeking a total drought relief of Rs 16,773 crore. The situation is severe in Maharashtra and Karnataka where 26 out of 36 districts and 24 out of 30 districts, respectively, are reeling under drought.
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El Niño, which is evolving now and may continue till at least springtime this year, may pose the second challenge. An El Niño occurs when sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean become substantially warmer than average, causing a shift in atmospheric circulation. El Niño impacts weather globally and is known to impact our monsoon, too. El Niño years are associated with reduced southwest monsoon rainfall. And, a deficient monsoon this year could spell disaster for the country. But, according to M Rajeevan, secretary, Union Ministry of Earth Sciences, it is too early to comment as it is a moderate El Niño and may not survive till the monsoon season.
The third challenge, which again will be a fallout of the El Niño, will be the heat waves. El Niño years are known to cause extreme heat waves. Climate scientists are already warning against 2019 being the warmest year on record largely as the result of a possible El Niño event. In 2015 and 2016, which were El Niño years, over 2,500 and 1,600 people were killed due to heat waves in the country. States must keep their heat action plans ready.
The fourth challenge will be increased variability in weather events due to climate change. Acknowledging that 2018 has been a year of many disasters, Rajeevan cautioned that as global warming continues, we should expect an increase in the frequency of these disasters as climate change will cause larger variability on both sides. Therefore, we should expect more floods as well as more deficient rains (droughts). This was evident even last year when several states that braved floods are now staring at drought.
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