Our
Sri Lankan guests have said that temperatures in Colombo have reached
40C and school sports activities that would normally take place at
this time have been cancelled.
The normal wet and dry seasons have
been disrupted and there has been a drought for some time.
Sri
Lanka becoming ‘hotter’
The
heat wave now beating down the entire country will continue into
April when the sun will be directly over the country, the
Meteorological Department said yesterday.
18
March, 2016
The
heat wave now beating down the entire country will continue into
April when the sun will be directly
over the country, the Meteorological Department said yesterday.
The
Met said the heat wave had pushed temperatures up 3 °C during the
day and 2 °C at nights above normal levels.
The
Met added that normal annual temperatures in the country swung
between 26.5 °C to 28.5 °C. El- Nino (a climate cycle in the
Pacific Ocean with a global impact on weather patterns) could be one
of the reasons for the increase in intense heat. Usually, the sun is
directly over Sri Lanka during February and March.
The
Met Department said the country was right now moving away into the
inter- monsoonal season with the North-East monsoon ebbing away.
"Because
of Global atmospheric movements, winds flowing over the country have
been mostly hot and dry but inter-monsoonal showers were very likely
within a week or just over and that would drive the heat wave away to
some extent in some parts of the country," the Met dded.
Normal
weather conditions would resume after the onset of the South-West
monsoon towards the latter part of May, the Met predicted.
From 2014
From 2014
Sri Lankan media reports on climate change
State of the Climate: Record Heat and Weather Extremes
Sri
Lanka seeks ways to turn El Niño pain into gain for farmers
5
January, 2016
POLONNARUWA,
Sri Lanka (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Rice farmer
Weerasinghearchchilage Darmarathana is used to periodic flooding in
his low-lying village of Galella in central Sri Lanka.
The
60-year-old has lived all his life on the flood plains of the
country’s longest river, the Mahaweli, in Polonnaruwa District,
some 250 km (155.34 miles) northeast of the capital Colombo.
“It
used to be maybe twice, three times a year the road would go under,
but the last year has been insane,” said the paddy farmer. In his
recollection, Galella has never been flooded with the same frequency
as in the last two months of 2015.
The
village was hit six times in less than two months, Darmarathana said,
after unusually heavy rains battered the region in November and
December.
Over
a million people were marooned in Sri Lanka’s Northern, North
Central and Eastern Provinces, and over 400 homes and other buildings
were destroyed.
An
advisory issued by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in early December attributed the
rains to the current El Niño weather phenomenon, likely to be the
strongest since 1997-1998.
Extreme
rainfall also caused havoc in India late last year, including
extensive flooding in the city of Chennai.
“The
consensus that strong El Niño conditions has led to abnormal
rainfall during the northeast monsoon season in South Asia indicates
that El Niño had a part to play in the sequence of extreme weather
events in India,” the ESCAP advisory said.
Excessive
El Niño-linked rainfall across southern India and northern Sri Lanka
was expected to continue into early 2016, it added.
Sri
Lankan authorities said they were prepared. “Historically El Niño
has meant more rains in this region, so we have been making our
predictions on those lines,” said Lalith Chandrapala, head of the
island’s Department of Meteorology.
Chandrapala
said the country could be in a position to benefit from the El
Niño-induced rains, which began in mid-November on the back of a
weak monsoon he assessed to be 75 percent below average.
“We
have been telling agencies like the Department of Agriculture to
advise farmers to prepare for rains,” he said.
CHANGING
MINDSETS
The
ESCAP report also noted that the waters from the current bout of
rains could be used for the upcoming planting season.
As
the heavy rains struck when there was no harvest, agricultural losses
have been negligible.
Pradeep
Koddiplili, deputy director at the Disaster Management Centre, said
no warnings had yet been issued for potential El Niño-related crop
damage, mainly because the rains had coincided with the preparation
of fields for planting.
But
disaster risk experts working in rural areas say awareness of
changing weather patterns remains low and could prevent farmers
making the most of the unseasonal rains.
Sarath
Wickramasinghe, a disaster risk reduction specialist with the Sri
Lanka Red Cross who works in North Central Province, said people in
the country’s dry zone lacked sufficient infrastructure and
knowledge to adapt to shifting rains.
"They
are traditionally geared for the monsoon, which comes twice a year -
even some officials are," he said. "That mindset needs to
be changed."
Farmers
must adjust to long dry spells, like that experienced in parts of Sri
Lanka between June and October 2015, broken by heavy rains. “Right
now the cultivation cycles follow the traditional monsoon,” he
added.
Farmer
Darmarathana from Galella has worked according to the monsoon since
he started farming in the 1970s.
“I
don’t know any other timetable,” he said. “Someone needs to
teach me the new methods, if there are any.”
Wickramasinghe
said the approach of traditional farmers needed to evolve “if we
are to gain any kind of advantage from the changing rain patterns”.
The
Red Cross and the U.N. Development Programme have launched a pilot
project in Polonnaruwa District to help farmers adapt to uncertain
weather and climate conditions.
Targeting
100 families in Nagastenne village, it provides them with assistance
including seeds and technical knowledge to develop sustainable
agriculture methods, such as water harvesting, and to restore
degraded and.
Sri
Lanka ready for El Niño
- As the El Niño hits South Asia, Sri Lanka announces readiness to face the phenomenon
- Officials bank on assessments that predict extra rainfall in Sri Lanka over the last quarter of 2015
- Wildly erratic weather over the last five years has kept Sri Lankan authorities on their toes
26
October, 2015
[COLOMBO]
Sri Lankan officials say the country is prepared to face the El Niño
weather phenomenon in the last quarter of 2015 and take precautions
based on the experience of the recent past.
Temperatures have remained above average this year and a prolonged dry spell has left over 200,000 in the Northern Province thirsting for safe drinking water. But, officials at the Meteorological Department (MD) and the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) say the impacts are manageable.
According to global weather forecasts the periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean called El Niño has now set in with most predicting it to be similar in strength to an occurrence in 1997. “The strong El Niño is expected to last until at least the end of the year before declining in the first quarter of 2016,” the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said in an update on 13 October.
However, some assessments also predict that South Asia was likely to receive above average rains in late 2015. “Countries on the equator can expect more rain, flooding and higher sea levels as El Niño takes hold,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says.
Temperatures have remained above average this year and a prolonged dry spell has left over 200,000 in the Northern Province thirsting for safe drinking water. But, officials at the Meteorological Department (MD) and the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) say the impacts are manageable.
According to global weather forecasts the periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean called El Niño has now set in with most predicting it to be similar in strength to an occurrence in 1997. “The strong El Niño is expected to last until at least the end of the year before declining in the first quarter of 2016,” the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said in an update on 13 October.
However, some assessments also predict that South Asia was likely to receive above average rains in late 2015. “Countries on the equator can expect more rain, flooding and higher sea levels as El Niño takes hold,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says.
“We have analysed past weather patterns when El Niño was active and what we have seen is that in the last quarter of the year rains, in fact, increase in this part of the globe,” says L. Chandrapala, director-general of the MD. “More rains in the last quarter of the year would be welcome following a weak South West Monsoon — the monsoon was below 75 per cent this year.”
The failure of the rains and high temperatures have caused ground water resources to dwindle in the Northern Province. Over the last two months, the DMC has been supporting local authorities to deliver water to the worst-hit communities.
But, Chandrapala says Sri Lanka is now better prepared to deal with fluctuating climate trends that have resulted in frequent extreme weather events. “It is about long-term planning — we are better prepared than we were five years back.”
“So far, there is no sign that things will worsen, we have not received any warnings from the MD or the agriculture department of major crop losses,” Pradeep Koddiplili, DMC deputy director, tells SciDev.Net.
Sri Lanka has seen five major floods and four major droughts since 2010, attributed by changing climate.
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