The weather has been unseasonal, but that is normal for an El Nino year which is why Sikkim should not allow itself to be caught off-guard
SUBASH RAI
Do not let the ongoing spate of unseasonally heavy downpours fool you. “The Little Boy” of climate flux has arrived, the Australian met department having recently declared the oceanic temperatures to be registering as a “major” El Niño pattern. For those in Sikkim who might seek solace in their distance from the oceans, and hence untouched by their warming, the language of the alarm sounded by climate experts should force a rethink – these scientists are seeing the “return of El Niño like some enraged climate-driven Godzilla emerging from the depths of the South Pacific to lay waste entire regions”!
But Climate scientists [is that even an accepted profession?] are known to be alarmist, so let us go by statistics which have already been registered. 2014 produced the highest global temperatures since records began in the 1880s. An El Nino year this year will mean that the summer is going to be even more or a scorcher. A depressed monsoon is on the cards, predicted even by Indian met officials, and news from the plains suggests that the mercury is the mood to climb record highs this year. Such projections might appear improbable given the continuing lashing of Sikkim by the unreasonably heavy unseasonal rainfall, but it is highly unlikely that the El Nino projections will not come true.
But Climate scientists [is that even an accepted profession?] are known to be alarmist, so let us go by statistics which have already been registered. 2014 produced the highest global temperatures since records began in the 1880s. An El Nino year this year will mean that the summer is going to be even more or a scorcher. A depressed monsoon is on the cards, predicted even by Indian met officials, and news from the plains suggests that the mercury is the mood to climb record highs this year. Such projections might appear improbable given the continuing lashing of Sikkim by the unreasonably heavy unseasonal rainfall, but it is highly unlikely that the El Nino projections will not come true.
