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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  Skymet or IMD: Who will get the monsoon forecast right?
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Skymet or IMD: Who will get the monsoon forecast right?

The two weather agencies have had different forecasts for this year's monsoon since April

While a normal monsoon will come as a relief to policy makers and farmers, rainfall in July and August so far have been disappointing. The rainfall deficit widened to 10%, as on Monday, after weak rainfall in the country this month. Photo: HTPremium
While a normal monsoon will come as a relief to policy makers and farmers, rainfall in July and August so far have been disappointing. The rainfall deficit widened to 10%, as on Monday, after weak rainfall in the country this month. Photo: HT

For once, the state-run forecaster India Meteorological Department (IMD) and private weather forecaster Skymet Weather Services Pvt. Ltd are on the same page: Rainfall in August will be below normal.

The two weather agencies have had different forecasts for this year’s monsoon since April. Recently in August, while IMD reiterated that monsoon this year will be deficient, Skymet in July said that it will be normal.

But Skymet now seems to be tweaking its forecast for August in the wake of monsoon’s performance so far, and has said that it will be below normal.

“Next 10 days are very important for the overall performance of August. We can expect the deficit to hold or drop, but it will more or less be around 10% by the end of August," said G.P. Sharma, vice-president, meteorology at Skymet. “September holds the key, but so far it is looking just about normal. But even if September has normal rainfall, the season will end with below-normal rainfall."

Monsoon season is crucial in a country where at least half the farmlands are rain-fed and more than 70% of the annual rainfall is concentrated in this season.

While a normal monsoon will come as a relief to policymakers and farmers, rainfall in July and August so far have been disappointing. The rainfall deficit widened to 10%, as on Monday, after weak rainfall this month.

Large-scale weak rainfall is expected to continue in the next week, according to the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. IMD’s director general told Press Trust of India on Monday that the season will end with a 12% deficit in rainfall.

The country will receive only 84% of the 50-year average rainfall in the second half of the monsoon season this year, IMD said in early August. August and September typically receive 49% of the rainfall for the entire June-September rainy season.

After weak rainfall in July, which ended with a deficit of 15%, Skymet changed its forecast slightly, though it stuck to the normal monsoon forecast, which it has changed only now.

“Taking cognizance of July rain, and the updated August and September forecast, we are revising the monsoon forecast to 98% (normal) of the LPA from 102% issued in April (error margin of +/-4%)," said Skymet in a statement in late July.

Last year, both agencies forecast below-normal monsoon rainfall, and at the end of the season, India faced a drought.

The IMD ensemble statistical forecasting system uses five predictors, which include the El Nino, sea surface temperature (SST) conditions in the equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans, Equatorial South Indian Ocean SST, East Asia Mean Sea Level Pressure and Northwest Europe Land Surface Air Temperature.

According to meteorological agencies across the world, the 2015 El Nino is most likely to continue through this year and continues to strengthen. The latest update from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology on Tuesday said the 2015 El Nino has continued to strengthen over the past fortnight and that tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures are well above El Nino thresholds.

El Nino, a weather phenomenon that leads to warming of waters in the Pacific Ocean, is often associated with poor rainfall in India and is one of the main reasons behind the poor monsoon forecast by IMD.

“This year’s monsoon is peculiar; where it is raining, it is creating floods and other places, it is dry. Certain phenomena which cause good rainfall in (the) southern peninsula usually are absent this season. That is the reason for the deficit there," said an IMD official.

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Published: 18 Aug 2015, 12:48 PM IST
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