Monsoon 26 pc deficient till date in July

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 18

Earth Sciences minister Jitendra Singh on Sunday “reviewed the trends of the Southwest Monsoon” at India Meteorological Department headquarters and urged scientists “to further focus on more accurate forecasting”.

“Stating that weather forecast data analysis is a complex exercise”, the minister urged “the scientists at the IMD to further focus on more accurate forecasting,” according to an official statement  

He asked the IMD to “step up people-oriented services, particularly for the agriculture sector and disaster areas like flash floods, cyclones, and rain downpours, by using Apps and other such latest hi-tech options,” it added.

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According to the officials, the Minister spent over an hour, “personally studying the monsoon trends”. He also went to the exclusive Satellite and Radar Sections and discussed the process of procurement of data on a real-time basis.  

IMD Director General Mrutyunja Mohapatra informed the Minister that this year the monsoon rainfall was 10 per cent above normal in June but 26 per cent deficient till date in July.

The IMD has predicted “normal” rains for 2021.   

Officials told the minister that besides other state-of-art equipment, the IMD at present has 27 radars across the country, the number which will go up to 50 in coming years. 

India is one of the five countries in the world to have the most modern lightning forecast system in place and the IMD is sending more than 42 million SMS twice a week to farmers across the country, Mohapatra said.

Facing severe criticism over repeated wrong forecasts on the arrival of monsoon over Delhi and also Haryana, and Punjab, the weather department recently called such failure by numerical models in predicting “rare and uncommon”. 

“Such type of failure by numerical models in prediction of monsoon advance over Delhi is rare and uncommon,” it said in a detailed clarification as it explained how rains progressed till June 13 in association with favourable atmospheric circulation and a low-pressure system over the Bay of Bengal since onset over Kerala on June 3.

On June 14, weather analysis based on satellite and NWP model consensus indicated the approach of a trough in mid-latitude westerly winds, leading to weakening of easterly winds over northwest India. “However, this development of interaction with westerlies could not be anticipated by the weather prediction models,” it said.

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