NEW DELHI: Meteorological Department has predicted that the monsoon this year will be lower than normal and “controversial struggle to begin soon” This was Started in a press release here.
The IMD clarified that this was only a “tentative” assessment and a more detailed “final and quantitative” forecast of the 1992 monsoon would be made in the second half of May after more data is available the release adds.
To what extent this tentative assessment comes true will depend on how closely “projections of the still emerging parameters get validated during the next eight weeks”. The first forecast is to base on hour of the 10 parameters written used to predict the behavior of the monsoon.
Of the eight parameters considered four have been considered “favorable” these are temperature in North India northern hemisphere temperature 50 millibar (mb) level winds and 10 mb level winds The unfavorable parameters relate to temperature in the east coast. Euraslan and Himalayan snow-covers and the fact that there was no El Nino last year.
The official release states that notwithstanding the success of the model developed by the IMD in forecasting the monsoon in the last four year the 1992 monsoon “represents in some sense very complex interplay of the 16 parameters and poses an interesting challenge to the interpretative and predictive skills of IMD Scientists.”
The basic premise of the monsoon model is that the earth’s land-ocean-atmosphere system starts its preparatory work for the event of the monsoon well ahead of its occurrence. It is in the midst of this ongoing process that evaluation of the “first” set of signals takes place. The South-West monoon extends for four months between June and September during which period the country as a whole receives on an average rainfall of approximately 88 cm.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 24, 1992
