‘Good chance of normal monsoon in south India’

Monsoon arrival could be on time in June first week in Kerala and gradually spread across the country in the next few days.

A weather forecasting laboratory at the India Meteorological Department at Mausam Bhawan in New Delhi. File

Despite the El Nino factor showing up in the Pacific Ocean, there is a good chance of South India having a normal or even excess rainfall this year during the monsoon period till September. While there could be rain deficit in October post monsoon, November could see ample rainfall again, according to senior meteorologist Kanti Prasad on Friday.

“Going by the forecast projected by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and other global climate studies there is a distinct probability of a monsoon deficit with moderately negative side of normal due to the El Nino - high surface temperature on the Pacific Ocean, of upto 70 % probability,” explained the former IMD Technical Director.

However, at the same time the Indian Ocean Diode (IOD) — warming of the Indian Ocean surface temperature, is also showing an upward trend which could effectively nullify the El Nino factor as it had happened recently in 1997 and 2006. It indicates monsoon arrival could be on time in June first week in Kerala, gradually spreading across the country in the next few days.

But, the Climate Forecast System (CFS) model outputs does indicate that large parts of North India, particularly North West India may experience moderate deficiency in overall precipitation even as most of Southern Peninsula are expected to receive normal rainfall, Dr. Prasad explained.

He was speaking at a seminar on insurance for covering seed germination and production risks organised by the Weather Risk Management Services (WRMS) Pvt Ltd., for which he heads the meteorological services.

Stating that “forecasting was a complex” issue, he said the current climate predication models could not accurately predict the long range forecasts but with available models it was possible to give short range - upto 72 hours and medium range - upto 10 days, could be predicted fairly accurately. Problem with long range forecast by IMD was that it does not provide spread of monsoon or spatial distribution or monthly rainfall behaviour.

WRMS gives climate change related risk management services including weather forecasts in 15 countries across the globe processing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA - US) climate forecast model and frequently posts forecasts on its platforms like myfarminfo.com and weatherzilla.com useful for farm sector and crop insurance to manage production risks, said Sonu Agarwal, founder WRMS.