The Hindu Business Line : Monsoon revival not until next week-end

THE annual typhoon-tornado season has kept its date with the Western Pacific as powerful cyclones fed in by the `warm pool' threatened to rain it down heavily in the Pacific-Rim, including Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong and Southern China.

The busy season in the Western Pacific has implications for India as it is intertwined with the weakening of the contemporaneous southwest monsoon.

As on Saturday, Typhoon Chaba was threatening to swamp Japan, while Typhoon Aere targeted Taiwan with devastating floods and landslides. The story was not any different as heavy rains, triggered by the cyclonic systems advancing coastward to make a landfall, lashed Hong Kong and the Philippines.

The Western Pacific becomes active at the expense of the southwest monsoon, resulting in the shifting of the monsoon trough to the northeast of India. This brings in its wake a `break monsoon' phase marked by a substantially weakened rainfall over vast areas of north India.

Speaking to Business Line, Dr M. Rajeevan, Director, Forecasting, India Meteorological Department (IMD), Pune, confirmed that a break monsoon had come to set in. This was expected to last for 7-10 days. "Yes, this would have adverse implications for end-August performance of the monsoon," he said.

As of now, there is nothing to suggest a low pressure developing in the Bay of Bengal, which will signal the revival of the monsoon. But this should happen some time towards the end of the next week.

In any case, the country isexpected to get another good spell before the 2004 season draws to a close. According to Dr Rajeevan, the spell should be as potent as the one that brought heavy rains earlier this month. This should help improve the overall monsoon performance and bring it close to normal - in line with the IMD's original long-term forecast for the season, he said.

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