Private forecaster Skymet declares monsoon arrival, IMD disagrees

Amazingly, Skymet a private forecaster claims that the monsoon onset has happened not only over Kerala but as far north as Telangana except there is no evidence of it as precipation.

(TimesofIndia) A storm is brewing over the onset of monsoon as private forecaster Skymet has taken on the weather office and declared that the monsoon has already reached southern India, but the India Meteorological Department insists that the rainbearing system will land in the next 48 hours, in line with its forecast of June 5.

For Jatin Singh, CEO of Skymet, the monsoon has not just hit Kerala, it has reached Karnataka and Telangana also.

"As of now, most conditions (as set by the IMD) have been met for the onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala, according to us," he said.

BP Yadav, head of the National Weather Forecasting Centre at the weather office said rainfall has increased across Kerala, which was only one of the criteria.

"Monsoon is not only rainfall. There are other patterns including wind speed, clouding etc which have not met the parameters," he said.

The IMD says monsoon had been static for 10 days and is likely to make progress in the next 48 hours.

It says that monsoon's progress in June will be delayed and less vigorous due to feeble monsoon current. The monsoon activity in June will be mainly confined to west coast, north east India and southern peninsula as the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) has issued the extended range forecast for next 20 to 25 days. Normally, monsoon covers central India (till Bhopal and slightly above) by June 15. However, the forecast says that the monsoon will be over peninsular India up to June 25 and may advance to central India afterwards.

"The rainfall would be confined to west coast and north east India upto June 15. The strengthening and progression of monsoon seems to be slackened till June 18. Monsoon would reach central India by June 20 as a feeble current,"

says the forecast. In its seasonal forecast, the IMD has already forecast a below-normal monsoon for the country taking into consideration the possibility of an El Nino phenomenon.

Monsoon activity in June will be mainly confined to west coast, North East India and southern peninsula.

"Even when the monsoon will cover the peninsular India, it will not be vary vigorous as there is the anti-cyclone at the lower levels, which is attracting the winds from the north west instead of attracting them from the south west," said a meteorologist on condition of anonymity.

However, the forecasters have not linked the expected slackness of the monsoon in June with the developing El Nino.

The Australian weather office, which tracks the dreaded El Nino, has said in its update on Tuesday that El Nino is 70% likely to be developed by August.

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DailyMail: Drought fears sparked by El Nino threat as monsoon fails to hit Kerala on time

It is now more or less clear that this year's forecasts of a Super El Nino was just hype. What we should be getting is a weak or at the most a moderate intensity event.  This makes its likely impact on global temperatures minimal. However, the converse may not hold true in relation to the Indian Monsoon this years. Though the El Nino effect maybe minimal, it is the behaviour of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). The IOD is presently neutral with a slightly positive bias. But if it flips to its negative mode, then we can still stare into the face of one of the worst droughts in recent times.

India's life-giving season of rain has already missed its scheduled June 1 date with Kerala, and there's a one-in-four chance that the delay could turn into a full-on drought.

It is said that the mechanism of the Indian monsoon is understood by every schoolboy but the experts don't have a watertight theory yet.

Add to that the not-so-well understood El Nino phenomenon - an upwelling of warm water in the eastern Pacific that has a far-reaching effect on regional weather patterns across the globe - and the picture starts drying up for India.

Private forecaster Skymet more or less agrees with IMD, but has responded ominously to the Kerala disappointment.

"Its (the monsoon's) further progress is likely to be staggered and slow," says GPS Sharma of Skymet.

Slow movement

The widespread fears of delayed rains have arisen from the slow advancement of the southwest monsoon over the Andaman Sea, which normally occurs around May 20 every year, with a standard deviation of about a week.

A scientist in the Ministry of Earth Sciences told Mail Today that it is too early to say whether India will witness drought-like conditions, but acknowledged that a low pressure system in the Indian Ocean is affecting the flow of the monsoon current.

India monsoon

Even as fears loom large of a delayed and weak monsoon, the Met Department has claimed that conditions are becoming favourable for the onset of rains over Kerala and its further advance into more parts of South Arabian Sea, remaining parts of the Maldives-Comorin area, some parts of Tamil Nadu and Bay of Bengal and few parts of the northeastern states during the next three to four days.

The IMD has forecast the onset of the monsoon over Kerala on June 5, with a model error of plus or minus four days.

The monsoon normally sets in over Kerala on June 1 every year and its onset signals the commencement of the rainy season across the region.

Indicators

Last year, the monsoon set in over Kerala on June 1 while in 2012, it had set in on June 5. In 2011, Kerala started receiving rainfall on May 29 while a year earlier, the monsoon reached the state on May 31.

In 2009, rains struck the coastal state on May 23. Operational forecasts for the onset of the monsoon are issued on the basis of six indicators – minimum temperature over northwest India, pre-monsoon rainfall peak over the southern peninsula, outgoing long-wave radiation over South China Sea, lower tropospheric zonal wind over southeast Indian Ocean, upper tropospheric zonal wind over east equatorial Indian Ocean and outgoing long-wave radiation over southwest Pacific region.

Allaying fears of a delayed monsoon, the head of IMD's forecast department, B.P. Yadav, said:

"From the ground parameters, the conditions are favourable for the onset of monsoon over Kerala and we stick to our forecast of monsoon striking Kerala on June 5, with a margin of four days. There are no changes in the given forecast."

A scientist in the Ministry of Earth Sciences told Mail Today that it is too early to say whether India will witness drought-like conditions, but acknowledged that a low pressure system in the Indian Ocean is affecting the flow of the monsoon current.

India monsoon

Even as fears loom large of a delayed and weak monsoon, the Met Department has claimed that conditions are becoming favourable for the onset of rains over Kerala and its further advance into more parts of South Arabian Sea, remaining parts of the Maldives-Comorin area, some parts of Tamil Nadu and Bay of Bengal and few parts of the northeastern states during the next three to four days.

The IMD has forecast the onset of the monsoon over Kerala on June 5, with a model error of plus or minus four days.

The monsoon normally sets in over Kerala on June 1 every year and its onset signals the commencement of the rainy season across the region.

Last year, the monsoon set in over Kerala on June 1 while in 2012, it had set in on June 5. In 2011, Kerala started receiving rainfall on May 29 while a year earlier, the monsoon reached the state on May 31.

In 2009, rains struck the coastal state on May 23. Operational forecasts for the onset of the monsoon are issued on the basis of six indicators – minimum temperature over northwest India, pre-monsoon rainfall peak over the southern peninsula, outgoing long-wave radiation over South China Sea, lower tropospheric zonal wind over southeast Indian Ocean, upper tropospheric zonal wind over east equatorial Indian Ocean and outgoing long-wave radiation over southwest Pacific region.

Allaying fears of a delayed monsoon, the head of IMD's forecast department, B.P. Yadav, said:

"From the ground parameters, the conditions are favourable for the onset of monsoon over Kerala and we stick to our forecast of monsoon striking Kerala on June 5, with a margin of four days. There are no changes in the given forecast."

El Nino Seen as Probably Weak by Forecasters as Event Looms

This blog had been one of the first to rule out a Super or strong El Nino. Read here. Now the same international forecasters who hyped a Super El Nino are now betting on a weak event.

(Bloomberg) El Nino this year will probably be weak, potentially reducing the impact of the event which typically brings drought to parts of Asia and rains to South America, said Commodity Weather Group LLC and AccuWeather Inc.

The chance of a weak pattern is 65 percent and the odds of a moderate one are 35 percent, said David Streit, CWG’s co-founder. The probability of a weak event is 80 percent, said Dale Mohler, a forecaster at AccuWeather. Streit and Mohler have been meteorologists for three decades.

El Ninos can roil world agricultural markets as farmers contend with dry weather or too much rain. Forecasters from the U.S. to the United Nations have warned that the event could happen this year, and Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said last month the pattern may develop by August. ABN Amro Group NV says confirmation would bolster coffee, sugar and cocoa futures.

“It’s still a tough call on whether this will remain weak or reach moderate” levels, Streit from Bethesda, Maryland-based CWG said in an e-mail to Bloomberg. A weak event is more likely because of the weakening of the warm pool of water below the surface of the Pacific Ocean and “the difficulty in getting the trade winds to weaken significantly,” he said.

El Ninos, caused by the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific, occur irregularly every two to seven years and are associated with warmer-than-average years. The last El Nino was from 2009 to 2010, and since then the Pacific has either been in its cooler state, called La Nina, or neutral.

Weak Intensity

While the Standard & Poor’s GSCI index of eight agricultural commodities climbed 10 percent this year, it’s declined 9 percent from an 11-month high at the start of May on signs of increasing world grain supplies.

Mohler from AccuWeather said that El Nino will probably

“set in during July and last six to eight months. It should be of weak to perhaps moderate intensity.”

In 1997-1998, the strongest El Nino on record back to 1950 helped push the global mean temperature in 1998 up 1.2 degrees to what was then an all-time high of 58.1 degrees Fahrenheit (15 Celsius), according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The event in 2006-2007 caused droughts in the Asia-Pacific region, more than halving Australia’s wheat output and hurting Indonesia’s coffee harvest.

The probability of an El Nino is around 85 percent and the event should develop by late June, said Donald Keeney, a meteorologist at MDA Weather Services in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The chance of a weak pattern is 35 percent, for a moderate one 50 percent and a strong one 15 percent, he said.

There are signs an El Nino is imminent, presaging changes to global weather patterns, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization said April 15. The U.S. Climate Prediction Center said May 8 that the chances of El Nino developing during the Northern Hemisphere summer exceed 65 percent.