IMD predicts ‘Normal’ Monsoon this year

New Delhi: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted a ‘normal’ rainfall during the monsoon season between June to September this year.

Addressing a virtual briefing on Friday here, Ministry of Earth Sciences Secretary M. Rajeevan said the Long Period Average (LPA) of the monsoon will be 98 per cent which falls in the normal category.

“This is good news for all as the monsoon is expected to be normal this year,” Rajeevan said.

The neutral ENSO conditions are prevailing over the Pacific Ocean and Neutral Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) conditions are prevailing over the Indian Ocean. The latest global model forecast indicates neutral ENSO conditions are likely to continue over the equatorial Pacific and negative IOD conditions are likely to develop over the Indian Ocean during the ensuing monsoon season, the IMD said in a release today.

As sea surface temperature (SST) conditions over the Pacific and the Indian Oceans are known to have strong influence on Indian monsoon, IMD stated that it is carefully monitoring the evolution of sea surface conditions over these Ocean basins.

The monsoon season starts when the southwest monsoon first hits the southern tip of Kerala usually in the first week of June and retreats from Rajasthan by September.

Rainfall between 96-104 per cent of the LPA is considered normal.

There have been demands from different users and government authorities for forecasts of spatial distribution of seasonal rainfall along with the regionally averaged rainfall forecasts for better regional level planning of activities. For this specific purpose, Office of Climate Research & Services, IMD, Pune has now developed a Multi-Model Ensemble (MME) forecasting system based on coupled global climate models (CGCMs) from different global climate prediction and research centers including the Monsoon Mission CFS (MMCFS) being used by IMD.

“The IMD has developed a Multi-Model Ensemble (MME) forecasting system, a universally
accepted technique, which is used to improve skill of forecasts and reduce forecast errors
when compared to a single model-based approach. Based on the system, we have predicted the monsoon for this year. The performance improvements are completely attributed to the collective information of all models used in the MME forecasting system,” said IMD DG Mrutyunjay Mohapatra.

(With agency inputs)