India's monsoon is likely to have average rainfall in 2012
despite fears the El Nino weather pattern may emerge in the second half of the
season, the country's top weather official said, pointing to a third straight
year without drought.
The June-September monsoon, vital
for agricultural output and economic growth, irrigates around 60 percent of
farms in India, the world's second-biggest producer of rice, wheat, sugar and
cotton. Agriculture accounts for about 15 percent of India's nearly $2 trillion
economy, Asia's third biggest.
"Rains could be
normal this year due to the absence of any strong signal that could inhibit
occurrence of a healthy monsoon," L.S. Rathore, director-general
of the state-run India Meteorological Department (IMD), told Reuters in an
interview.
The IMD forecast is the basis for
the government's official forecast which will be released in the last week of
April with more details.
According to the IMD
classification, rains between 96-104 percent of a 50-year average of 89
centimetres are considered normal. The last time there was a drought with rains
below this range was 2009 and before that, in 2004.
"The
apprehension that the El Nino will impact the monsoon badly seems misplaced as
this weather pattern is likely to emerge only towards end-August which is one
of the two wettest months. Besides, El Nino is just one of the many factors
that come into play," Rathore said.
El Nino, an abnormal warming of
waters in the equatorial tropical Pacific, is linked with poor rains or a
drought-like situation in southeast Asia and Australia.
The La Nina weather pattern, which
is associated with heavy rains in south Asia and flooding in the Asia-Pacific
region and South America, and drought in Africa, ended in March.
In the interim before El Nino
appears, Rathore said a neutral condition continues over the tropical Pacific.
"On a number
of occasions, monsoon turned out to be normal despite the emergence of El Nino.
There is no direct, one-on- one relationship between the success of the monsoon
and the occurrence of El Nino," he said.
Last month, the Australian Bureau
of Meteorology said climate models indicated that the La Nina weather pattern
had come to an end.
In 2009, the El Nino weather
pattern turned monsoon rains patchy, leading to the worst drought in nearly
four decades. Rains were within long-term averages in following years, helped
by La Nina.
According to the weather office,
the El Nino weather pattern was present in 13 of the 20 drought years in the
past 111 years.
"Although I
cannot talk about this year's monsoon forecast now, as it due between April 25
and April 28, what I can say is there is no cause for concern at all," Rathore said.
A monsoon with average rains
would boost grains output, helping Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's coalition
government keep inflation under check and boosting the faltering economy.
India's economy grew by 6.1
percent in the December quarter, its slowest in almost three years. To
accelerate that, the central bank on Tuesday cut interest rates for the first
time since 2009.
In 2011, the monsoon rains were
101 percent of the long-term average, surpassing the weather office's forecast
of 98 percent but still within average levels.
The southwest monsoon rains enter
India through the southern Kerala coast around June 1 and cover the entire
country by mid-July.
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