Thiruvananthapuram: A portend of what Kerala will suffer during this summer was perhaps felt far away, in the waters off the South American coast last Christmas.
Last December, the Pacific Ocean off the coast was unusually warm. It was the Spaniards, who lorded over South America for nearly 400 years till the 19th century, who first called this almost magical phenomenon 'El Nino'.
The Pacific Ocean is normally too cold along the Chile, Peru and Ecuador coasts for it to be a beach destination. But in certain years, during Christmas season, the ocean gets unusually warm. For the Spaniards stuck in desert-like conditions and itching to swim in the seas, this was a joyful event. They saw it as heavenly intervention.
Vargas Llosa's failure
Since this strange heating up coincided with the Christmas season, the first of the Spanish conquisitadors, overwhelmed by a pagan impulse to worship mesmerising natural events, called it 'El Nino', the Christ child. The Spanish realised the folly of the nomenclature soon enough. Unlike the birth of Jesus Christ, this phenomenon they called 'the child' had a devilish effect on their existence. The name but stuck.
Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa tried renaming it, called the phenomenon 'El diablo' (the devil) in his novel 'The Time of the Hero'. This was perhaps the only Llosa invention that readers ignored.
The World Meteorological Organisation has predicted that an El Nino event was more than 50 per cent likely in 2019. It seems Kerala is already in its grip. The Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) has warned that temperature may swell by 8 degree Celsius in at least four districts in the state.
Strange behaviour
El Nino happens when the trade winds blowing towards the equator weakens, failing to pull up cold air from deep within the ocean. The consequence would be that the surface temperature over the normally cold regions of the Pacific Ocean heats up, dramatically altering normal weather behaviour. “The ocean becomes anomalously warm,” said Raghu Murtugudde, an expert in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. All of a sudden, as if fed up with its infuriating routine, the weather plays truant.
If as scientists say that such acts of cosmic indiscipline occurs every three to four years, 2019 is just the right time for the next El Nino event. The last time El Nino happened, it was four years ago in 2015, the hottest year in the state's history. Palakkad had then set a record when the peak temperature soared to 42 degree Celsius.
Too sweaty a prediction
Atmospheric science expert S Abhilash, however, feels that the KSDMA warning is a slight exaggeration. “If there is going to be a surge as predicted by the KSDMA, the temperature could touch 45 degree centigrade, which is highly improbable,” he said.
It is but true that there has been an increase in the long-period average by 1 to 2 degree centigrade. “This is mostly the result of climate change. The world has warmed by 1 to 1.5 degree Celsius in the last three decades,” he said.
Abhilash, however, suspects that 2019 could be the El Nino year. “The weather is indeed showing an El Nino flavour,” he said. Nonetheless, Abhilash said that it was still not as strong as in 2015, when temperature rose alarmingly during March and April and then eventually climaxed in a drought. According to Abhilash, taking into account global warming and the El Nino possibility, there could be a departure of 3 degree Celsius, not the 8 degree Celsius projected by the KSDMA.
The hidden demon
Manoj M G of CUSAT's Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research, too, expects only the same extent of temperature surge in the coming days. However, Manoj is not ready to brush aside the KSDMA warning.
“When we are speaking of temperature we are referring only to the air temperature. But if we add humidity to it, the heat a person suffers will be considerably high. So even if the air temperature rises only by 2 or 3 degree Celsius, the real temperature rise would be somewhere around 8 to 10 degree Celsius if humidity is also taken into account,” he said.
To illustrate, Manoj gave an example. “Say the air temperature is 35 degree Celsius. If the humidity is 50 per cent like in some coastal areas in the state, the heat an individual feels will be roughly 42 degree Celsius. If the humidity is 60 per cent, then the felt heat will be around 45 degree Celsius, 10 degrees more than the air temperature” Manoj said.
Finally, the good news
Whether the heat conditions will ultimately lead to a drought situation, like in 2015, will depend on the summer rains. “It looks like we would get a healthy spell of summer rains from the second week of March,” Abhilash said.
Reason for optimism: the Madden-Julian Oscillation, a weather movement that brings to places it travels through, has already crossed the Indian Ocean. “By the second week of March it is expected to pass over central India Ocean, bringing rains to the southern peninsula,” he added.
