‘Normal monsoon' may lack fire during onset phase

Agency reports have quoted top India Meteorological Department (IMD) officials as saying that the country would likely have a normal monsoon this year.

This goes to corroborate an earlier report on February 23 in these columns giving similar “advance take” on 2011 monsoon.

The Business Line report had based the outlook on model runs by renowned agencies such as the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University; the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts; the UK Met Office; and the Tokyo Climate Centre as well as the Regional Institute for Global Change (RIGC) under the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

But the RIGC said in its first detailed advance forecasts made available on Tuesday that rainfall signals for the launch phase of monsoon and the month of June fail to inspire.

A none-too-spectacular monsoon onset with a likely deficit for the south peninsula, east-India and parts of the northeast is what the RIGC is projecting.

One causative factor could be the less-than-normal warming of the land during the summer.

The “pull power” of an area of lower pressure over land due to summer heating could get thus compromised, affecting the speed of winds carrying moisture inward.

But rains are shown to be good over Gujarat, northwest India and Jammu and Kashmir for June, the only individual month for which forecast is available.

Earlier, some of the models mentioned above had ventured to give out a normal to above normal seasonal rainfall on the strength of a live but shrinking La Nina phenomenon in the equatorial and east Pacific.

Marked by intense cooling of the east Pacific and a corresponding warming to the west, La Nina has tended to benefit a concurrent Indian monsoon without direct-cause-effect relationship.

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