- According to private weather forecaster Skymet, there is unlikely to be a drought in 2019. This is because the El Nino is expected to diminish gradually by the beginning of monsoon. Recently, the U.S. National Climate Centre had issued a forecast that an El Nino had formed and would last up to spring 2019.
- El Niño means The Little Boy, or Christ Child in Spanish. It refers to the large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate interaction linked to a periodic warming in sea surface temperatures across the central and east-central Equatorial Pacific. El Niño events occur roughly every two to seven year.
- A strong El Nino results in reduction and uneven distribution of rainfall across the Indian sub-continent. This is because the trade winds coming from South America which normally blow westward towards Asia during Southwest Monsoon gets weakened due to the warming of the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, moisture and heat content gets limited and this leads to poor rainfall in the region.
