NEW DELHI: The monsoon is likely to set in over Kerala on May 26, IMD said on Friday while making a forecast of an early start of the rainy season in India. Monsoon normally sets in over Kerala on June 1 with a standard deviation of about seven days.
“This year, the southwest (summer) monsoon is likely to set in over Kerala on May 26 with a model error of ± 4 days,” said the Met department, noting that its operational forecasts of the date of onset over Kerala during the past 21 years (2005-2025) were proved to be correct except in 2015.
The advance of the southwest monsoon over the Indian mainland is marked by monsoon onset over Kerala and is an important indicator characterizing the transition from the hot and dry season to the rainy season.
Last year, monsoon arrived over Kerala eight days in advance on May 24. Early or late arrival of monsoon has, however, nothing to do with the overall quantitative or spatial rainfall during the four-month rainy season.
The Met department has already predicted ‘below normal’ monsoon rainfall this year over many parts of the country amid the growing risk of El Niño - a climatic pattern associated with warming of the ocean surface in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. El Niño is invariably associated with harsher summer and weaker monsoon in South Asia.
Meanwhile, the Met department on Friday said that the conditions are favourable for the advance of southwest monsoon over parts of south Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea and Andaman & Nicobar Islands during the next 24 hours.
IMD has been issuing operational forecasts for the date of Monsoon onset over Kerala from 2005 onwards, using an indigenously developed statistical model with a model error of ± 4 days.
The six predictors used in the models are: minimum temperatures over north-west India, pre-Monsoon rainfall peak over south Peninsula, 0utgoing Long wave Radiation (OLR) over south China Sea, lower tropospheric zonal wind over equatorial southeast Indian Ocean, outgoing Long wave Radiation (OLR) over southwest Pacific Ocean, and lower tropospheric zonal wind over equatorial northeast Indian Ocean.
Vishwa Mohan is Senior Editor at The Times of India. He writes on...
Read MoreVishwa Mohan is Senior Editor at The Times of India. He writes on environment, climate change, agriculture, water resources and clean energy, tracking policy issues and climate diplomacy. He has been covering Parliament since 2003 to see how politics shaped up domestic policy and India’s position at global platform. Before switching over to explore sustainable development issues, Vishwa had covered internal security and investigative agencies for more than a decade.
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