rediff.com: Monsoon sets in over Kerala, Lakshadweep

The south-west monsoon has set in over entire Kerala and Lakshadweep and the region is expected to receive normal rainfall during the four-month season, local weather office has said in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday

"The region is expected to receive rainfall of 99 per cent of the long-term average this year as the factors are conducive for a normal monsoon," weather office director V K Gangadharan said.

The El Nino factor was not expected to have any adverse impact on the monsoon rains over the region, he said.

"El Nino, a recurring phenomenon marking unusual ocean temperature in South Pacific, need not always be a determining factor affecting the monsoon. In 1997-98, El Nino was stronger than what it is now but it did not have a big impact on the monsoon. The region had also experienced bad monsoon with no El Nino there," Gangadharan said.

"There are four models used at the international level and all are predicting a different track of the El Nino effect. Focus is now increasingly shifting to another concept called Indian Ocean Dipole to accurately predict monsoons," director general of Meteorology R R Kelkar

Scientists now give more attention to the temperature in the Indian Ocean rather than the Pacific. Trends indicate that if two different temperatures are taken in the Arabian Sea and South Indian Ocean there is a wide variation.

"The Indian Ocean Dipole is like a seesaw, if one temperature is higher, other is lower, something which we now take into account while making the forecast."

El Nino is more than normal temperature at the sea surface off the coast of Peru, which then travels east and adversely affects the monsoon.

While one model predicts an over two per cent above normal temperature, another shows a flat trend and yet another a fall in the sea surface temperature.

"It is like a menu we can choose from, but more importantly, 11 of the 16 parameters considered indicate a favourable monsoon. Of the remaining, four are related to El Nino," he said.

To plan out agriculture related work, one should rely more on existing data rather than highly accurate predictions, he added.



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