-Livemint.com The Met dept has decided to simply replace the word ‘drought’ to describe poor rainfall with ‘deficient year’ and ‘large deficient year’ New Delhi: There will be no more droughts in India. Since it can’t control the weather but can control language, the state forecaster India Meteorological Department (IMD) has decided to simply replace the word “drought” to describe poor rainfall with “deficient year” and “large deficient year”. What appears to be...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The national weather agency has adopted a new rulebook, tweaking figures that define rain conditions, cold and heat waves and abandoning what it has conceded were ambiguous and unhelpful terminology such as "could" and "may". A forecasting circular issued by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has altered in subtle ways the definitions of cold and heat waves (see chart), introducing uniform cut-offs for locations across the country, and...

-Livemint.com The year that is drawing to a close was dotted by extreme weather events, posing new challenges for weather forecasting New Delhi: Unseasonal rains and crop damage in several states, followed by deficit rainfall and drought in nine states, topped off by a deluge in Chennai at the end of 2015. The year that is drawing to a close was dotted by extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent. Several...

-The Hindu 2015’s El Niño on course to being the strongest ever. The highest daily rainfall in a century. Freak weather conditions on one day. The hottest-ever Indian Ocean. The strongest-ever El Niño. The hottest year on record. The bad news is that a perfect storm of meteorological conditions combined to create Chennai’s worst-ever deluge last week, exacerbated in no small part by civic infrastructure pushed to its limit and systemic dysfunction. The...

-The Times of India PUNE: This year is not only in line to be the hottest on record globally but also in India. The country has lived through its hottest September, October and November this year, reveals India Meteorological Department's data going back to 1901. The countrywide mean temperature in November this year was 1.25 degrees C above normal, the highest-ever for the month since record keeping began. The mean minimum and...