Heat wave across North India as rest of the world braces for El Nino

DELHI: As June inches closer, mercury is soaring across the country. Indian Meteorological Department ( IMD) has issued a statement that heat wave conditions would prevail at a few places over Gangetic West Bengal and at isolated places over Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and southwest Madhya Pradesh. Maximum temperature is expected to go up by 2 to 3 degree Celsius in another 3 days.

Maintaining a dry weather for the country, IMD said that isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall would occur over Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

“Conditions remain favourable for further advance of southwest monsoon into some more parts of east-central and northeast Bay of Bengal during next 48 hours,” said IMD in its daily weather report.

For countries to the south of the equator however, chances of El Nino stand firm with Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) maintaining its alert on El Nino developing by August.

“The tropical Pacific Ocean continues a general trend toward El Niño, with just over half of the climate models surveyed by the Bureau suggesting El Niño thresholds will be exceeded by August. An El Niño alert remains in place, indicating at least a 70% chance of an El Niño developing in 2014,” said the El Nino Southern Oscillation wrap up report issues by BOM on Tuesday.

IMD has indicated in its forecast on southwest monsoon that the country would receive below normal rainfall from June to September period, due to developing El Nino across the Pacific.

El Nino has a history of adversely impacting the rainfall in India during monsoon. In the last decade, 2002, 2004 and 2009 were drought years in India due to emergence of El Nino. Prevailing fear of El Nino impacting rainfall in India has raised concerns regarding lower agricultural yield, rising inflation and GDP rate getting hit further.