The Indian Meteorological Department has issued warnings of heat waves in parts of India and heavy rainfall in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Climate scientist Sachin Karpe notes that an developing El Nino could result in below normal rainfall in India from June to September. El Nino events can cause massive changes in global rainfall patterns, resulting in both floods and droughts. Karpe warns that a strong El Nino could impact India's agriculture and food prices. However, Karpe also says that the monsoon projections do not indicate a high probability of drought in 2014-2015 for India.

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Heat wave across North India as rest of the world braces for El Nino says Sachin Karpe
Source: Business Consultant
Dated: May 22, 2014
Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued a statement that heat wave conditions would prevail
at a few places over India and isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall would occur over Andaman & Nicobar
Islands.
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 India and isolated heavy to
very heavy rainfall would occur over Andaman & Nicobar Islands. 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 says Sachin Karpe.
Extreme El Niño events develop differently from standard El Niños, which first appear in the western
pacific. Due to this, there is massive changes in global rainfall patterns which result in floods and torrential
rain in some places and devastating droughts and wildfires in others. Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at
the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, says the coming event could rival the
one from 1997. He has been monitoring sea levels .According to Sachin Karpe, about 30% of the
manufacturing sector in India is agriculture-based. So a bumper crop ensures the supply of raw material for
industry at relatively lower prices. To add to this, about 60 %of net sown area of the country is rain-fed.
If El Niño does arrive you can expect food prices to rise even faster than they are at present. Large swathes
of agricultural land, land that currently supplies everything from fruit and vegetables to grains and cattle,
will suffer from the massive weather variations that El Niño brings. Drought and floods will take their toll
in areas that are often not well equipped to deal with weather that is the opposite of what they usually
experience. As the months roll on, the predictions will become more precise, but the 80% certainty stated
by many forecasters and scientists indicates that our current weather patterns may well be about to change.
High rise in the prices of food articles has always been a concern to the policy makers in India, more so
during recent years when it has averaged 10 percent during 2008-09 to December 2012. Given that an
average household in India still spends almost half of its expenditure on food where as a poor household
spends still higher share on food, prolonged spell of high food inflation has caused havoc to their finances.
However, on the other side, the projections of monsoons do not point to a very high probability of a drought
in 2014-15 says Sachin Karpe.
To know more about Sachin Karpe kindly visit his homepage http://sachinkarpe.org or follow him at
Google + https://plus.google.com/+SachinKarpe20
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