Apart from the Eastern region, rainfall in all the other
regions show significant correlations with ENSO
(Table 2). While the overall correlation between NINO3
and rainfall for the entire record is modest, an examination
of the annual climatology (Figure 2) shows that rainfall
during El Niño phases is diminished in comparison to
that during the La Nina phase. This relationship leads to
low correlation values that mask the actual predictability.
Of the 46 wettest tercile of seasons, 30 had neutral ENSO
conditions (Table 3).