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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, June 10

The monsoon may not revive for anther week setting the clock back on its entry into the farming heartland, an India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Wednesday.

But moisture-laden southwesterlies are shown strengthening along the southwest coast from Thursday to bring showers in places where the monsoon has already made its onset.

An analysis of the numerical model predictions in the medium-term suggest that rains may break out over the peninsula to time with the passage of a fresh Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) wave from June 18 onwards.

This more or less supports the IMD outlook, and is a commentary on how the monsoon has failed to fire on its own cylinders despite forecasts to the contrary and how it would need an ‘external’ trigger to get going again.

Monsoon holding on its own would have meant that the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal tune themselves up to the beats set by the ‘shear zone’ of turbulence propagating north from the peninsular south.

But the Bay, churned up by tropical Cyclone Aila early in the season, has failed to hold one end up. Disoriented flows from a successor ‘low’ dumped their moisture over Myanmar instead.

Predictions by most international models now say that the MJO wave would impact the equatorial Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, south peninsular India and southwest Bay of Bengal from June 18.

Leading them is the coupled linear inverse model by the Earth System Laboratory of the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Its prediction says that the MJO would be active until July 10.

But the 40-day forecast based on empirical wave propagation technique by the Climate Prediction Centre of the US National Weather Services sees the activity going until July 19, though varying in intensity.

In a special bulletin, the IMD explained that advance of monsoon is generally not a systematic and regular feature. Surges in the strength of southwesterlies across the north Indian Ocean push the system inland.

With each surge, the rains revive and the rain belt shifts north and northwest.

But each wet spell is followed by a hiatus of about six to eight days when the rains taper off, grinding the northward advance to a halt.

Given that the advance of monsoon over east, north peninsular and adjoining central India would be delayed, kharif sowing activity in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat would need to be rescheduled. Soyabean, cotton, sugarcane, pulses and groundnut are the main crops impacted.

The IMD has said occasional thunderstorm activity will continue over these areas. Maximum temperatures could climb beyond the 40-degree Celsius mark with occasional heatwave conditions in isolated pockets.

In fact, on Wednesday, heatwave conditions prevailed over parts of northeast Madhya Pradesh, interior Orissa, Chhattisgarh and coastal Andhra Pradesh.

They may gradually extend to more parts of Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab, Haryana, north Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

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