More than 2/3rds of the Earth’s surface area is occupied oceans and it is no wonder much of the heat generated by human activity is absorbed by the oceans. This in turn influences Global weather in various forms which could be a separate post all together. In the context of today’s post long term trends indicate there is a very high correlation between warm winters of the Indian Sub Continent and El Nino conditions prevailing over the Pacific Ocean. Frequent western disturbances lead to cloudy skies / rains over North India reducing the number of days under cold wave conditions during El Nino years. This year worryingly the overall warming has possibly impacted the snow line over the Himalayas where places like Kashmir have seen a snow drought leading to Gulmarg in the Pir Panjal ranges, home to one of the highest ski resort in the world, seeing very little snow for skiing.
Down south over the Peninsular India things have not been very cosy either with interior areas of Karnataka and parts of West coast seeing warmer than normal day time conditions. Not only the day time temperatures are warmer places like Bengaluru have seen much warmer nights as well. The average minimum temperatures at Bengaluru during the month of December and January is about 15.7°C. This winter the minimum temperatures so far has been higher than long term mean minimum temperatures pretty much every day indicating how warm the winter has been so far.
Sub seasonal weather forecasts indicate almost all of Peninsular India is expected to see warmer than normal temperatures for the next couple of days at the least. Once again interior Karnataka and parts of Kerala may see day time temperatures resemble early summer conditions. While short term weather outlook indicate the next couple of days may see cold nights over parts of Karnataka overall trend seem to be indicate warm winters to continue for the rest of the season. Places like Nilgiris where ground frost is a regular occurrence during active winter conditions have also seen very few days of ground frost which may be a blessing in disguise for some of the farmers in the district.
There are some indications early next week the nights may be cool with minimum temperatures staying a couple of degrees below normal over large parts of Tamil Nadu the overall trend once again would lean towards warm winters over large parts of the state with dry weather to persist.