New Delhi: India is likely to see a deficit of rainfall through the crucial monsoon months of June to September, private forecaster Skymet Weather said Monday.
According to Skymet, the monsoon is likely to be 94 per cent of the Long Term Average (LTA) rainfall over the four-month period. Normal rainfall is described when it is between 96 and 104 per cent of the LPA.
The forecast comes at a time when predictions of an El Nino setting in in later part of the year are gaining strength. A natural climate phenomenon that causes abnormal warming of the Pacific Ocean, El Nino has been known to negatively affect monsoons in India.
“Key oceanic and atmospheric variables are consistent with ENSO-neutral conditions. Likelihood of El Nino is increasing and its probability to become a dominant category during the monsoon is growing large. El Nino return may presage a weaker monsoon,” Skymet managing director Jatin Singh said in a statement.
The prediction comes as the country prepares for an unusually hot summer. On Thursday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had said that most parts of India would experience above normal temperatures from March to May.
Unseasonal rainfall this year has already devastated standing crops in parts of Northern India, ThePrint had reported.
According to Skymet, northern and central parts of the country are likely to be affected by the looming monsoon deficit. Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra “will witness inadequate rains” during July and August while Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh “are likely to observe less than normal rains during the second half of the season,” the private forecaster said in its press release.
Last year, rainfall across India during the monsoon across was marked by wide variations across regions, even as rainfall appeared within normal range as a whole.
“The problem with an overall projection is that it averages out the floods in the east with the droughts or dry conditions in the west,” Roxy Koll, a scientist with the Centre for Climate Change Research at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) had told ThePrint last year. “Regional departures from the norm give us a more accurate picture of monsoon conditions within the country,” he had said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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