'Three Droughts In A Row Has Happened Only Once'

Last year we saw the highest temperature in recorded history—130 years. India has witnessed an unusually warm winter and two back-to-back droughts. Indeed, Climate change has become an important part of the debate around our environment. Jatin Singh, CEO of SkyMet, India's first private weather forecasting organization, talks to Arushi Bedi about the impact of pollution on weather change, the reason for the strange weather trends we are seeing, and how it is still too early to call on rainfall in 2016. Excerpts:

Last year recorded the highest temperature in 130 years. What is the reason for this?

This is classic global warming and climate change. It affects the human experience beyond what we can imagine. One impact, of course, is droughts—and things that might not be directly attributable like the recent Chennai floods. Then the evolution of new viruses is a big concern. If it is warmer, mosquitos breed more and can cause breakout of Dengue, anthrax, malaria viruses which can now sustain themselves longer. For example there is white fly attack on the cotton in Punjab or the Zika virus which is spread through mosquitoes. You don't know what is coming. You need to see global warming as a very real and tangible threat. In fact it is much more of a threat than a bullet from Pakistan. You spend so much more to protect yourself from an invasion. But, here thousands die but with global warming you're looking at instability, farmer distress and a country that cannot protect itself.

Is pollution a factor?

It will take a few years to figure out what effect of pollution is on this but there is such a thing as an Asian brown cloud and the aerosol content in the air. Greenhouse gasses warm the atmosphere but they also cut the light. This is still being calibrated. If you look at the global warming theme and how it is showing, these greenhouse gasses are warming the oceans and that is what is playing havoc with the seasons. This year the summer was actually mild and not too hot. If you remember the winter of 2015 going into the summer, almost up to May, you had thunder storms and you had farmer distress for the winter crop because you had unseasonal rainfall. That was the anomaly.

Weather and pollution have been often linked…

The correlation between weather and pollution is something that has not been very well researched. It has been picked up in the last 2-3 years because the impact has become extremely tangible. We tend in India to sense pollution in winter more than in summer because the air gets packed in winter and become heavier and the particulate matter stays there and attracts humidity condensing into the black mass that we see.

Last year we had 3 good rain spells caused by wind which blew away the condensation. This year we did not have those winds so we had a perpetuated cloud—a combination of carbon burning, diesel fuels and agricultural discards—coming together and not being blown away. We are planning to do a lot more sensing of this pattern. It seems in this country that when people push back, things actually work and collaborating that with the odd-even rule, maybe tomorrow we can. To get a measure of predictability, of how the pollution will be tomorrow or in the coming days will help individuals as well as the government to plan better.

Coming back to where we started, what is causing this unusually warm weather and rather poor rainfall in India?

We need to look at the pacific for the source of instability in our short and long term weather problems. The area between Indonesia and Peru, the central and western pacific is the single largest body of water near us. It has a base line of 27 degree Celsius. Once it crosses a temperature of 27.5, it's called an El Nino effect. The temperature right now is up by 2.5 degree Celsius which is extremely warm. So when this happens, precipitation patterns all over the world change. It means east Asia and India will have less precipitation including West Africa. China and Japan the precipitation will increase. California which is the west coast will have higher precipitation. Winter globally is going to be mild. This year retailers in America have lost a lot of money because no one was buying winter clothing. The precipitation in winter actually goes down. This is something we are discovering just now. This phenomenon has probably been there before man came but why we are saying this is anthropogenic is because the frequency of El Niño has increased. When we correlate the El Nino with the Indian summer monsoon, 60% of all droughts are in El Nino years. And 80% of below normal rainfall (which is less than 95%) are in El Nino or an evolving El Niño.

Now between 1900s and 2000s there was one drought per decade. Between 2000 and 2015 we have had 5 droughts and almost 6-7 El Nino episodes. The frequency of El Nino episodes have gone up. The debate is, has this happened before? And the answer is yes. The monsoon works in tri decadal cycles. In this you would have rainfall which is of higher frequency followed by lower frequency of events. But the thing is that the ocean is a carbon sink and the capacity of the ocean to absorb carbon is much higher. It seems that if it absorbs carbon, it has to give it out. The El Niño episode of 2014 and 2015 are back to back. Although 2014 has not been declared as an El Niño effect --temperatures did go up but collapsed midway and regenerated in Jan 2015—I considered it to be an El Niño. Scientifically that might be contested. It did give you a drought like situation in 2014.

Basically the heat that has been absorbed by the ocean has been given out so often that you see repeated episodes. If you don't get long term climate impacts, it says until 2020-30 somewhere the numbers of droughts are going to be high and at some point of time when global warming has reversed, a higher rainfall will start. These things though could change. We were supposed to go into excess rainfall regime in 1985 but that did not happen. So between 1955 and 1985 we saw a higher frequency of droughts. But right now the theory is that such conditions are going to hit you again and again. In 2030, the temperature will be plus 2 degree Celsius and the heating will create evaporation and you will get the reverse effect.

You had predicted last year that the rainfall is going to be 102% whereas the IMD had called for drought. What went wrong there?

There were a number of factors for this. Firstly, back to back droughts are very rare. Statistically, when two El Niño's occur one after the other, the second El Niño is not as bad as the first. The model that we use is called CFS version 2. This model is an ensemble of a 100 different models from which we infer a trend of what is going to happen. We have used it to great effect over the past few years and have been right every time. This time, it gave us a very clear picture that this is going to be a normal monsoon. This episode is extremely similar to a 1999 episode with the second most powerful El Nino which did not give a drought. We thought our statistics and computing are coming together and we should call it.

We did a lot of investigation into what really went wrong, and while it is still speculative decided that the key here is sea surface temperatures. The US sent new satellites up last year. Their sea surface temperatures, the information source of CFS 2 were miscalibrated which we did not know about. Post the prediction, we realised that those sea surface temperatures need to be recalibrated. CFS 2 since then is unstable.

But then how did the IMD get it right?

That is because they have their own sea surface temperature machines which I don't have access to. The IMD had been using a different model for this computation. I feel that they never took the El Nino as an important factor. There is a gentleman by the name of Mr BR Sikka who came out with a paper in 1980 to look at this correlation which he said wasn't very huge. In 2014 February, when SkyMet had said there was an El Nino and the 2014 monsoon won't be good, the reaction of the then person in charge of IMD was that El Nino was a western conspiracy to play with our devices. But the IMD's forecast after 2014 became very El Nino based. What I'm trying to say is that had we not pushed this point, I'm not sure this would have happened. But if you ask me if El Nino is the only determinant, no. I do believe it is the most powerful determinant. If you are in this game, and use El Nino as a determiner, you are right 6 times out of 10.

You also work with a lot of crop insurance by providing weather data. So how a prediction such as this, which has gone wrong, effect other businesses of yours?

Globally, India is the leader in long and medium range forecast. This correlation of back to back drought with such a powerful el Nino has never happened. Look at the evolution of dialogue that has happened because of this now. We do different things for different people and we correct ourselves. So if something goes wrong, we figure it out on the way. My crop insurance business is mostly post facto and we have our own sensory machinery to derive results but we have put a lot of money in this business and if you tread the wrong path, you will get beaten. If you don't take risks, you cannot get further in the business.

So how will these climate changes affect the crop further?

The winter season is required for crops because it recharges the water and the cold weather is needed for the grass to grow otherwise the size of your grains will shrink. Winter predictions are not as good as summer ones but we face several challenges because of an El Niño affected winter. One is that we might get into a pre mature warm regime by February which might affect the crop and I hope I'm wrong but there is also a chance of unseasonal rainfall coming by April. Also hail is something we are underestimating. Hail is something that used to occur in J&K and Arunachal. Now we find hail in Maharashtra and MP. So we need to watch out for these risks as we go ahead.

What are Skymet's predictions for 2016?

As of now, we have no predictions. It is too early. I would say there is a 50-50 chance for good rainfall this year. The El Nino effect is supposed to fade but unfortunately it is not fading fast enough. You can predict such change in weather for about 6 months but they usually only hold good for about 3. You need to take a call in March. If El Niño comes down at a visible rate by June, we have a good chance for rainfall. If it still sustains, we might have a good chance but it is touch and go. Back to back droughts are rare and three droughts in a row has happened only once in history. So I would hold my cards.