Rama Krishna Sangem
After US based private weather agency Skymet last week, our own Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) too came out with a positive prediction for upcoming South-West monsoon – normal rains! Monsoon is expected to enter Kerala by June 1. The IMD gave its prediction on April 15, Monday.
This is definitely comes as a relief to the government’s fight against inflation, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicted an ‘above-normal’ monsoon in 2024, which quantitatively could be around 106 per cent of the long period average (LPA). This mirrors the consensus that most weather experts have on the Indian monsoon this year.
Last week, the private weather forecasting agency Skymet also stated that the cumulative all-India southwest monsoon this year could be ‘normal,’ at 102 per cent of LPA. The LPA for the June to September rains is 87 centimetres, and a forecast of 106 per cent of this means that the monsoon could be ‘above normal’. Rainfall between 96 per cent and 104 per cent of LPA is considered normal.
The forecast comes with a model error of plus/minus 5 per cent. This is the first time since 2016 that IMD, in its first forecast, has predicted ‘above-normal’ rains.
El Nino turned into La Nina
An El Niño, expected to turn neutral by the time the monsoon season sets in June and then gradually move towards La Niña, a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, and below-normal snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere from January to March will all combine to give India a good monsoon, according to IMD.
In 2023, the southwest monsoon was ‘below normal’ due to the effect of El Niño, the first time in the preceding four years.
The Met department said that almost 75-80 per cent of the country’s landmass is expected to receive normal monsoon this year except for some areas in the extreme Northwest (hills of Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand), East, and Northeast India (such as some parts of Assam, Odisha, and Gangetic West Bengal) where monsoon rains might be below normal.
“This usually happens in ‘above-normal’ monsoon years when parts of East and Northeast India receive ‘below-normal’ rains,” IMD’s Director-General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra told reporters in a briefing on Monday. This will have widespread impact on Indian economy in the coming weeks.
