NEWS
- 25 March | The Honest UPSC Talk Nobody Tells You Click Here to see Abhijit Asokan AIR 234 talk →
- 10 March | SFG Folks! This dude got Rank 7 in CSE 2025 with SFG! →
- 10 March | SFG Folks! She failed prelims 3 times. Then cleared the exam in one go! Watch Now! →
- The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said that the southwest monsoon would be arrive in Kerala on June 6. The normal onset date is June 1.
- The prediction is in line with that of private weather forecaster Skymet’s which has said that the 2019 monsoon would arrive in Kerala on June 4 and make a sluggish progress thereafter due to the influence of El Nino- the large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate interaction linked to a periodic warming in sea surface temperatures across the central and east-central Equatorial Pacific.
- The IMD uses a customised weather model to forecast the arrival of southwest monsoon in India. The model has a built-in error margin of four days.
- The model is based on 6 meteorological parameters viz. a) the minimum temperatures over northwest India; b) the pre-monsoon rainfall peak over south Peninsula; c) the outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) over the South China Sea; d) the lower tropospheric zonal wind over southeast Indian Ocean; e) the upper tropospheric zonal wind over the east equatorial Indian Ocean; and f) the outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) over the southwest Pacific region.
- The IMD had earlier said monsoon rains are expected to be normal in 2019- 96% of the Long-term average (LPA). The IMD defines normal rainfall as between 96% and 104% of the Long Period Average (LPA). LPA (50year average) of monsoon rains in India is 89 cm.
- The IMD issues operational forecast for the southwest monsoon seasonal (June to September) rainfall for the country as a whole in two stages. The first stage forecast is issued in April and the second stage forecast is issued in June.
- These forecasts are prepared using state-of-the-art Statistical Ensemble Forecasting system (SEFS) and using the dynamical coupled Ocean-Atmosphere global Climate Forecasting System (CFS) model developed under Monsoon Mission of the Ministry of Earth Sciences. The dynamic model is known as Monsoon Mission Coupled Forecasting System (MMCFS)
- In 2012, National Monsoon Mission was launched with aim to develop a state-of-the-art dynamical prediction system for monsoon rainfall on different time scales.
