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| IMD admits to inaccurate rain forecast |
| Newswire18 / New Delhi Oct 09, 2009, 00:55 IST |
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The India Meteorological Department (IMD) today admitted that its long range seasonal forecast of the southwest monsoon this season had been inaccurate and that it had overestimated the actual rainfall situation.
“The operational long range forecast for the seasonal rainfall over the country as a whole and over four homogenous regions except south peninsula have not been accurate,” the department said in its end-of-season report for southwest monsoon 2009. It went on to say that its forecast of rains in August had also not been correct, and that all these forecasts were “overestimate to the actual rainfall situation”.
The Met department had downgraded its original prediction of 96 per cent of normal rain for the year to 87 per cent, and then to 81 per cent of the long period average. The season, however, ended with the country receiving 77 per cent of its 10-year average rain, making 2009 a severe drought year for the country, with substantial damage to kharif output. A saving grace for the department, however, was its correct forecast of the onset of monsoon over Kerala, a feat the department achieved for the fifth straight year.
It also correctly predicted the rainfall situation in India’s southern peninsula and July rain to be around 96 per cent of normal level. In the report, the IMD said of the 526 meteorological districts in the country, 215 or 41 per cent received normal to excess rains, while rains in a vast majority of 311 districts or 59 per cent of the country had been deficient to scanty.
Rainfall this year was weakest over northwest India, which received 64 per cent of the normal rain. Central India got about 20 per cent less rain, while northeast India received 27 per cent below normal rain. Rainfall in southern India was the best among the four regions this year at 96 per cent of the long period average. “The monsoon covered the entire country on July 3, about 12 days earlier than its normal date of July 15, when the interaction between the monsoon flow and mid-latitude westerlies resulted in copious rainfall over Rajasthan,’ the report observed. The report cited the subdued formation of low-pressure systems and weak cross-equatorial flows of the monsoon current during a major part of the season for the weak monsoons.
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