If India’s monsoons forecast turns out to be accurate, the nation is to be face it’s 12th worst drought since the year 1950 and also ‘two consecutive years of the calamity for only the fourth time and the first time in 30 years.’
However, a private weather service and the meteorological department’s own track record appear to maintain hesitation and ambiguity on the forecast. Of late, private-run weather forecaster Skymet Weather Services has emerged as a challenger to the IMD’s projections and has got almost all its forecast right every year since it started in 2012. Skymet has forecast a normal monsoon for 2015 and is sticking to its prediction, G.P. Sharma, vice-president, meteorology, remarks. Making predictions in the rains still continue to be cumbersome. Meanwhile, officials at Indian Meterological Department state that they are trying their best to rectify errors. “We are learning from our mistakes and are making our forecasts faster,” D.S. Pai, Chief Forecaster at the IMD, said.
However, both climatological and statistical factors argue against a deficient monsoon, G.P. Sharma, vice-president, meteorology, Skymet Weather Services, sid. “If the eastern end of the Indian Ocean is cooler than the western end, and there is an El Nino effect, that is the worst for the monsoon, but conditions are not like that,” he concluded in his statement.
Tags: drought india
