NEW DELHI: The vast oil slick reportedly moving from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea will have no effect on the monsoon that brings rains to India.
Dr Vasant Gowariker secretary in the department of science and technology told PTI that “from purely meteorological point of view the oil slick poses no threat” but did not rule out damage to marine ecology as a fall out of oil pollution.
Dr Gowariker said the Arabian Sea is too huge to be affected by the oil slick in a way that could influence the monsoon circulation which depended on several regional and global parameters.
A parametic model developed by Dr Gowariker and his team had successfully been used to forecast the monsoon for three consecutive years. This model was based on 16 parameters and the Arabian Sea was not one of them.
According to Dr Gowariker Indian monsoon “depends more critically on what happens over Tibetan plateau and the Bay of Bengal than on Arabian Sea.”
Indian Monsoon normally sets on June one and the oil slick is expected to reach the Arabian Sea by the end of March.
Even if the efforts failed to contain it much of the oil slick would have been broken up and evaporated by wind and wave action by the time it entered the Arabian Sea. “The natural cleaning up process is faster in the Arabian Sea which is very rough” Dr Gowariker said.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 1, 1991
