After temperatures hit intolerable levels, next 2 days will see a drop
A woman dons a scarf to protect herself from the blazing sun at Dadar on Wednesday. Pic/Ashish Raje
If meteorologists are to be believed, the daytime temperature is expected to drop by two to four degrees Celsius over the next two days. On Wednesday, the Santacruz observatory of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) recorded the third-highest maximum temperature in April in 10 years—38.8 degrees Celsius.
According to forecasters, however, Mumbai residents are likely to receive a significant reprieve from the summer heat. While Wednesday’s daytime temperature was five degrees above normal, IMD’s Santacruz and Colaba observatories recorded temperatures of 37.3 and 33 degrees Celsius respectively on Thursday.
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Mahesh Palawat, vice-president of meteorology and climate change at Skymet Weather, a private forecasting agency, tweeted on Thursday, “Relief is in sight. The temperature is likely to fall by two to degrees during the next two days.” According to data shared by the IMD, the highest maximum temperature in April in the past ten years—39 degrees Celsius—was recorded in 2014, followed by 38.9 degrees Celsius in April 2022.
An official from IMD’s Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC), Mumbai, said, “The anticyclone that has formed around Mumbai is to be blamed for the high temperatures. These anticyclones may dissociate during the following one to two days, which could result in a modest reduction in temperature.”
Rajesh Kapadia, a climatologist from the Vagaries of the Weather blog, said, “From Friday, the sea breeze—which was absent for so many days, leading to the rise in temperature—will start again. The presence of sea breeze will lead to a temperature drop of around three to four degrees Celsius during the day.”
Also Read: IMD heatwave warning: Dos and don’ts to battle high temperatures in Mumbai
Monsoon anxiety
The prediction of the onset of El Nino has triggered anxiety regarding the monsoon pattern across the country. El Nino is a term used to refer to the periodic warming of the ocean's surface temperature, which is normally centred in the central-east equatorial Pacific. El Nino is declared when sea temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific climb by 0.5 degrees Celsius or more over the long-term average. The tropical eastern Pacific experiences stronger El Nino effects than ordinary weather.
Skymet Weather, on its blog, stated, “Fears of an early and strong El Nino are being expressed during the monsoon season. As per National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers, the magnitude of the predicted El Nino shows a very large spread. While finding El Nino after La Nina (the colder counterpart of El Nino) isn’t rare, having extreme ones so close together is certainly abnormal. The last big one was witnessed in 2015-16.”
Meanwhile, Kapadia said, “There is the possibility of a delay in the monsoon. The possibility of El Nino is still not 100 per cent. We need to understand that El Nino is not just the only factor affecting the Indian monsoon. It is too early or premature to predict whether the quantum of rainfall will be affected. We can say there is a possibility. In 1997, a very strong El Nino prevailed. However, that year, the Indian monsoon was good as there were positive parameters that facilitated normal rainfall. This is likely to happen this year, too.”
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