CU Professor: Weaker monsoon in India linked to El Niño
The ongoing dry conditions due to lower summer (Jun to Sep) monsoon rainfall in India has left scientists and academics alike to discover which weather patterns and conditions work to suppress the annual monsoon and result in rainfall shortages in the nation. This season, the current rainfall deficit in India is around 43 percent. According to Balaji Rajagopalan, PhD, professor of civil engineering at CU-Boulder, the strength of the Indian summer monsoon and the resulting wet and dry conditions over India has long been related to the equatorial Pacific Ocean phenomenon known as El Niño. Droughts over India have all coincided with El Niño, but not all El Niños have produced droughts. This paradox continues to impede the understanding of the monsoon-El Niño connection. In an effort to learn more about this connection, Balaji and a team of researchers in their 2006 article in the journal SCIENCE, proposed that the flavor of El Niño with warmer sea surface temperatures over the central Pacific tend to produce a weaker monsoon. This flavor of El Niño was present this year in June and early July, resulting in a suppressed monsoon.