Srinagar, Sep 14: With winter still a few months away, uncertainty has already begun to surround Kashmir’s snowfall prospects, as global climate signals point towards a potentially warmer season while weather experts caution against drawing conclusions from any single phenomenon.
Director of the Meteorological Department, Srinagar, Dr Mukhtar Ahmad, in an exclusive conversation with Rising Kashmir, said prevailing global climate signals, including the influence of La Niña, suggest Kashmir could experience a relatively “warmer and milder winter this year.”
He, however, made it clear that a mild winter should not be interpreted as an absence of winter or snowfall.
“There may be a warmer and milder winter this year, but winter will surely arrive,” the Director said, adding that the eventual snowfall pattern would depend substantially on the behaviour of western disturbances.
Ahmad said Kashmir had experienced comparatively less snowfall during the past few years, and there was a possibility that the trend could continue, but stressed that snowfall remained an important component of the region’s winter cycle.
“We have seen very little snowfall in the past few years and this year may also be the same, but snowfall is very important. We will definitely have to see how the western disturbances behave,” he said.
The remarks assume significance as Kashmir’s winter is closely linked to western disturbances, the weather systems that travel from the Mediterranean and adjoining regions towards South Asia and are responsible for much of the Valley’s winter precipitation, particularly snowfall over the higher reaches.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has stressed that climate variability and long-term warming are increasingly interacting with natural phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, making seasonal weather outcomes more complex.
The WMO, however, has not predicted that India will have “no winter” this year. Its climate updates provide probabilities for temperature and precipitation patterns rather than declaring the disappearance of winter in any country. The broader climate picture remains concerning for Asia. The WMO has reported that Asia is warming faster than the global average over the long term, while the region is increasingly experiencing extreme heat, intense rainfall, flooding, drought, marine heatwaves and the continued retreat of glaciers in the high mountains.
Independent weather forecaster Faizan Arif, however, cautioned against directly linking Kashmir’s winter weather with ENSO conditions. “My point is that El Niño does not appear to have a direct or consistent impact on the weather of Jammu & Kashmir,” Arif said.
Arif said he had examined available data, including some of the strongest or “Super El Niño” events, but had not found clear evidence of a direct relationship between ENSO phases and weather patterns in Jammu and Kashmir.
“The data from the past decade also does not indicate any consistent trend. Precipitation has varied considerably from year to year, without following a particular pattern. Some El Niño winters have experienced higher-than-normal precipitation, while others have recorded below-normal or near-normal precipitation,” he said.
Arif said a similar assessment of La Niña and ENSO-neutral years also failed to establish a consistent pattern that could reliably explain precipitation or overall winter weather in the region. “The fundamental reason is that the weather of Jammu & Kashmir is highly complex and is influenced by multiple large-scale atmospheric and oceanic factors. ENSO is only one component of a much larger system,” he said.
According to him, the region can also be influenced, directly or indirectly, by the Polar Vortex, Siberian High, North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and other atmospheric circulation patterns. “Each of these can contribute to the eventual weather outcome in different ways and with varying strengths,” he said.
The forecaster said there could be indirect influences from global climate patterns, but attributing the weather of Jammu and Kashmir to a single factor would be an oversimplification.
“A much more comprehensive analysis, involving multiple years of data and considering the interaction between these different atmospheric and oceanic drivers, is required before drawing any firm conclusions,” he said. “Simply knowing whether a particular winter will be El Niño, La Niña, or ENSO-neutral is not enough to predict the weather of J&K. ENSO alone cannot determine how the winter will unfold over the region.”
The contrasting assessments underline the uncertainty surrounding the coming winter. While the broader climate signal may point towards warmer conditions, Kashmir’s snowfall story will ultimately depend on the frequency, intensity and trajectory of western disturbances and how they interact with the region’s local atmospheric conditions.
