BMKG Predicts Long Drought Due To El Nino Just Ended In Early 2024

Illustration of drought in NTB (ANTARA)

JAKARTA - The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) predicts the phenomenon of a long dry season causing drought due to El Nino to end in early 2024. Head of BMKG Dwikorita Karnawati revealed this prediction was taken from the results of an analysis of the sea surface temperature in the passive Ocean. "Currently, the El Nino index is at a positive value of 1.504. El Nino's condition is moderately predicted to last until early 2024," said Dwikorita in a virtual press conference, Friday, September 9. Then, Dwikorita said that the longer dry season in Indonesia was also influenced by the positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) condition or the sea-front temperature anomaly in the Indian Ocean. Currently, the positive IOD index is monitored at 1.527 and is predicted to remain positive until the end of 2023. Thus, according to Dwikorita, the current positive IOD condition further strengthens El Nino's influence on the reduction of rainfall and causes drought in Indonesia. "So, the dryness of the dry season is currently due to the influence of El Nino from the Pacific Ocean and the positive Indian Ocean dipole from the mutually reinforcing Indian Ocean," he explained. Dwikorita. "In other words, the superposition of the phenomenon of El Nino and the positive IOD causes the growth of rain clouds in Indonesia to be much less than normal related to low rainfall. In fact, it has been more than 2 months since several regions in Indonesia have not experienced any rain at all," he continued.

In BMKG monitoring a few months ago, the start of the dry season in Indonesia gradually started from April 2023 and reached its peak in August 2023 today. Meanwhile, climate disruption El Nino began to emerge in mid-May 2023 and continues to grow into moderate El Nino since the end of July 2023.