2023-An Evolving El Niño Year: Chances of sub-par Monsoon; Watch this space
Jatin Singh
Founder & Chairman at Skymet Weather Services Pvt Ltd and Founder & Director at Gramcover
First triple dip La Niña of 21st century is expected to fade away soon. The current NCEP (National Centre For Environment Prediction) forecast suggest that La Niña will continue till early 2023, making it one of the longest on record. The anomalies of cool temperatures in the Pacific waters are likely to dissolve, before 'spring' 2023. The scare is that La Niña may have steady transition into an evolving El Niño, coinciding with Indian summer monsoon. The warm equatorial Pacific during El Niño exacerbates extreme weather, rampaging across the globe and more so for Indian Sub-Continent.
El Niño is invariably linked with poor Indian southwest monsoon, the longest season from June to September. On an average, 80% of the El Niño years end up with 'below normal' rainfall and 60% of these lead to 'drought'.
The initial projections indicate ENSO building up sharply and El Niño rising exponentially. The second half of the season looks more alarming, wherein the 'neutral' and La Niña components may nearly get decimated.
El Niño forecast is available for the next 9 months. However, model accuracy for the lead times greater than 4 months is generally low at this time. Yet, the past record of El Niño indicated around this time, is a testimony of spoiled southwest monsoon. ENSO forecast of December 2013 and December 2017 were akin to December 2022. Both these years witnessed sub-par southwest monsoon rainfall leading to moderate drought in 2014 and near drought in 2018. Earlier, similar patterns in 2003 and 2008 also proved cataclysmic, defacing Indian monsoon 2004 & 2009, both severe droughts.
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In adverse situation, Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) can save the Indian Monsoon from the blues of El Niño. A strong and +ve IOD may neutralise the ill effects of El Niño to secure equitable distribution of monsoon rainfall. Courtesy strong IOD, seasonal monsoon rainfall in 2019 recorded all time high of this century, despite moderate El Niño.
Sea surface temperatures are close to average across the northern half of Indian Ocean. IOD is inactive now and is likely to remain within neutral bounds of +/- 0.4 Degree Celsius. Any steep rise is unlikely during the monsoon months. While IOD may remain silent during monsoon 2023, the presence of El Niño may cast shadow, to slash crop yield across Indian Sub-Continent.