Saturday, July 11, 2009

Not all El Nino weather conditions cause monsoon failure

As the entire country is grappling with a prolonged dry spell due to the delay in the monsoon, an official of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that not all El Nino weather conditions cause monsoon failure.

An El Nino, which means "little boy" in Spanish, is driven by an abnormal warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, and creates havoc in weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region.

A B Mazumdar, Deputy Director General, IMD, said that there is no direct link between the El Nino and delayed monsoon.

"Our studies show that while in many El Nino years, monsoon activity was subdued, at the same time monsoon didn't fail completely in our country in other El Nino years. So that's the reason why we cannot draw a direct relationship between the El Nino and monsoon like in some countries like Australia," said Mazumdar.

India's monsoon will remain weak according to the latest Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) index, which gauges the eastward progress of tropical rain.

The monsoon is crucial for summer-sown (Kharif) crops and most of marginal farmers rely solely on the rains.

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