New Delhi, The problem of piracy in the Indian Ocean is hampering the collection of accurate water surface temperatures by international weather forecasting agencies that indirectly affect India's long-range forecasts.
India depends upon global agencies for the prediction of El Nino and the Indian Ocean Diapole (IOD) phenomena, both of which went wrong this year.
The tropical western Indian Ocean is an important region because the western pole of the Indian Ocean Dipole, which is an atmosphere-ocean coupled climate mode in the Indian Ocean, is similar to the El Nino phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean.
Changes in subsurface ocean conditions in the western Indian Ocean are a key input for the prediction of IOD events and the monsoon system.
In 2012, most weather forecast agencies across the world failed to predict the IOD correctly. In April, it was predicted to be negative, due to which a drought was predicted for India. The IOD was predicted to be negative based on sea surface temperatures. But data about subsurface ocean conditions remain unavailable due to the problem of pirates in this region.
Rainfall in the later half of monsoon improved against our expectation as El Nino did not happen and IOD was positive. Both of this helped to improve monsoon rainfall to 92 per cent.
Several international weather data collection projects are reeling under the impact of rampant piracy along the African coast.
