El Nino unlikely to develop before mid-June

El Nino, which could bring drought to the Asia-Pacific region, is unlikely to develop at least until the middle of June, according to the US Climate Prediction Centre.

Conditions will be neutral with neither El Nino nor La Nina (which results in heavy rains and flooding) until the end of spring (mid-June) in the Northern Hemisphere, the Centre said in its latest outlook.

“Most models predict neutral conditions to continue through the Northern Hemisphere spring. After that, models predict either neutral or El Niño during the Northern Hemisphere summer 2014,” it said. El Nino occurs off the western coast of South America with temperatures of the Pacific Ocean rising. It can cause global climatic changes.

The sea surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean will have to increase by 0.5 degrees Celsius for five consecutive three-month seasons for signals that El Nino is developing.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology, in its update last week, said that conditions are neutral with indications neither favouring El Nino nor La Nina.

But the warming of the Pacific Ocean is likely in the coming months, with international climate models showing temperatures of the Ocean approaching or exceeding El Niño thresholds after June. According to Crisil, since 1991, twice out of seven El Nino led to the failure of monsoon in India. Therefore, there is a 30 per cent chance of monsoon being affected this year.

Agriculture Minister Sharad Paward said last week that the India Meteorological Department will come out with its outlook on monsoon by the middle of April.

Assessing the situation if El Nino affects monsoon, Crisil said that while impacting agriculture production, it will lead to surge in inflation.

In 2009, food production increased by a meagre 0.8 per cent, while inflation soared by over 15 per cent, it said, adding that if there is no growth in agriculture GDP in the 2014-15 fiscal, then the GDP growth would only by 5.2 per cent.

On the other hand, prospects look bright for pre-summer crops with the IMD data showing that the country has received 13 per cent excess rainfall since the beginning of this year.

However, the distribution has been uneven with parts of Karnataka, Gujarat, Odisha, North-East and Tamil Nadu receiving deficient rainfall. Of the 36 meteorological sub-divisions in the country, 16 have received excess rainfall but 10 have received deficient rain and another five scanty.

The excess rainfall in Maharashtra, parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab and Haryana should augur well for kharif or summer sowing, too, due to better soil moisture.

This has resulted in higher storage level in the 85 major reservoirs. On Thursday, Central Water Commission data showed that the storage level was higher than the last 10 years’ average. It was 48 per cent or 74.800 billion cubic metres (BCM) against a capacity of 155.046 BCM.