As India prepares to negotiate the core winter months of January and February in the new year (2022), the APEC Climate Centre based in Busan, South Korea, has ventured to suggest that La Nina’s impact on seasonal rainfall may not be as bad as it is being projected for most parts of the country.

Pre-summer rain is likely to be normal, according to the South Korean agency. In fact, it predicts above-normal rain for extreme southern parts of Kerala and adjoining Tamil Nadu.

Weak La Niña for the asking

Outlook for the Pacific suggests that there is 84 per cent chance of weak La Niña conditions persisting during January–March 2022, which gradually would give way to being ‘neutral’ (neither El Niño or La Niña) during April-June that coincides with the run-up to the South-West monsoon in India.

El Niño (warming of ocean waters in the Equatorial Pacific and cooling in the West Pacific) is contra-indicative for the monsoon, having in the past presided over deficit rain/drought, though with exceptions. La Niña represents the exact reverse and has generally favoured a normal/surplus monsoon.

Normal rain for April-June

Going forward, the South Korean agency sees above normal for India during the summer/pre-monsoon months of April-June except in Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Delhi, Chandigarh and East Rajasthan where it would be normal. No deficit trend is indicated anywhere.

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Meanwhile, the Application Laboratory of the Japanese national forecaster Jamstec, another leading meteorological agency in the East/Far East, mostly concurs with the South Korean agency’s outlook for January-May rainfall in India and facilitates a peek into the first half of the South-West monsoon.

Japanese agency outlook

But unlike the South Korean agency, the Japanese centre expects the Equatorial Pacific to slip into a classical La Niña, which will retrograde later into a ‘La Niña Modoki’. Japanese term Modoki means ‘same but different.’ Here, it falls between a full-blown La Nina event and its weaker version.

The Japanese agency’s earliest outlook for the first half of the South-West monsoon 2022 (June-July-August) predicts wetter than normal conditions along the West Coast, Central and adjoining North Peninsula, East India and eastern parts of North-West India (entire Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.)

Harsher winter in South

Normal to slightly above normal rainfall is indicated for the southern States of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. These are early forecasts and need to be monitored on a monthly basis to confirm if the agency is confident enough with its model projections to maintain the outlook into the onset of the monsoon.

Projections by disparate models have suggested that the country is bracing for a harsh winter typical of the La Niña season. The South Korean agency springs a surprise in suggesting that some of the coldest blasts during the upcoming season will be felt in the South, and not necessarily the North or North-West.

Normal pre-monsoon rain

So, Rayalaseema, South Interior Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala may find themselves battling a bitter cold, while it would be relatively warmer over the plains of North-West India, Central India, the North Peninsula and along the West Coast except Kerala and Interior West Maharashtra.

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Among the warmest regions would be Odisha, East Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Vidarbha, North Gujarat, South-West Rajasthan, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh.

As for the pre-monsoon season (April-June), temperatures are expected to be just above normal over Mumbai and adjoining West Coast (up till Goa to the South), the western fringes of Gujarat and Rajasthan along the international border, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand. They would be below normal for the rest of India (Central, East and North and South Peninsula).

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