India blames US amid El Nino warning

Indian residents and travellers walk past vehicles stranded by silt deposited by floodwaters. Mr Laxman Singh Rathore, director general of India Meteorological Department, reaction to predictions of a “monster” El Nino later this year was: “It is in the US and Australian interests that agri commodities and stock market in India come down.” PHOTO/FILE

What you need to know:

  • According to the Economic Times of India newspaper on March 24, 2014, Mr Rathore’s reaction to predictions of a “monster” El Nino later this year was: “It is in the US and Australian interests that agri commodities and stock market in India come down.”
  • India is hit because, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific waters, winds and, ad infinitum, mix. Consequently, the El Nino affects the monsoon rains, that historically, but not necessarily always, begins this time of the year.

India’s top weather official went a storm’s way recently. He haphazardly mixed issues.

Mr Laxman Singh Rathore is director general of India Meteorological Department.

According to the Economic Times of India newspaper on March 24, 2014, Mr Rathore’s reaction to predictions of a “monster” El Nino later this year was: “It is in the US and Australian interests that agri commodities and stock market in India come down.”

Mr Rathore didn’t identify the interests.

Weather offices and scientists have made similar predictions.

 This includes those in Australia, China, Japan and the United States. So has India’s private weather forecaster, Skymet Weather Services.

SPREADING RUMOURS

Mr Rathore’s advice, the newspaper reported, is: “They are spreading rumours.” Consequently, he argued, people will hoard, creating artificial scarcity and commodities leading to economic havoc. “Don’t heed their advice.” This implied a conspiracy by scientists and weather forecasters against India.

Technical details aside, the El Nino, is a band of warm water temperature that develops in the tropical Pacific Ocean off South America. The widely accepted view is it occurs between three and seven years. Not always though.

Think of warm and cold waves in millions of square kilometres in the Pacific Ocean. The El Nino occurs when the warm subsurface water moves east, dislodging the cold. That happens when the Pacific Ocean trade winds change traditional westerly direction and move eastward. Of course, other natural phenomena might be active. The result is weather turmoil globally. Included are droughts, floods, crop yields variations, heat waves, typhoons, ad infinitum.

Now “We have above-normal temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean and that often precedes an El Nino because there’s a large volume of above-average water temperature below the surface of the ocean,” Anthony Barnston, chief forecaster for the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, told the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) news. The warm water is “more likely to rise than not.”

It’s worth of note that historically the El Nino hits, with most and immediate devastation, nations bordering the Pacific Ocean.

Because it can last for up to a year or more, it affects global weather with varied consequences worldwide.

POLITICS OF WEATHER

India is hit because, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific waters, winds and, ad infinitum, mix. Consequently, the El Nino affects the monsoon rains, that historically, but not necessarily always, begins this time of the year.

It happens elections are underway in India. And, of course, monsoon rains are traditionally a political issue there.

 That’s because 60 per cent of India’s arable land is rain-fed and poor monsoon rains lead to poor harvests. Since 2002, El Nino has coincided with droughts in India.  

Mr Rathore is in business of knowing weather forecasts are just that. However, scientists have gotten better and better at predicting weather patterns, although models produced don’t always agree.

As a public official, Mr Rathore’s job, as is the case with all public officials on technical matters, isn’t identifying conspiracies and mixing issues. It’s accumulating and disseminating credible information and plausible outcomes.

Skymet’s CEO Jatin Singh is right. “There is no conspiracy. Correlation between El Nino southern oscillation and Indian summer monsoon rainfall is well known since the 1980s.” It’s that simple.