India likely to experience above normal cumulative rainfall this monsoon: IMD
IMD said the 2024 southwest monsoon season rainfall over the country as a whole to be above normal (>104% of the Long Period Average (LPA)).
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) today announced that the southwest monsoon which is crucial for farming in the country is most likely to be normal with a quantitative forecast of 103 per cent of the Long Period Average (LPA).
According to IMD, a normal monsoon rainfall is within the range of 96 to 104 per cent of the LPA.
The IMD introduced the new LPA this April, based on rainfall data from 1971-2020 for the southwest monsoon season, replacing the data from 1961-2010. The LPA is 87 cm or 870 mm.
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Addressing a press conference, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, IMD’s Director General (meteorology) said, “Quantitatively, the monsoon season (June to September) over the country is likely to be 103 per cent of the LPA with a model error of plus/minus 4 per cent.”
He said the monsoon rain would be above normal in central and southern India (with more than 106 per cent of LPA) while it is most likely to be normal in the northeast (with 96-106 per cent of LPA of this region) and northwest India (with 92-108 per cent of LPA of this region).
Explaining further, Mohapatra said, “La Nina conditions are expected to continue throughout the monsoon period. Also, we are dependent on a dynamic system. All the statistical parameters, including all multimodal ensemble forecast — surface air temperature, surface temperature over Pacific etc — the consensus is for normal, but not 99 per cent but 103 per cent.”
La Nina conditions are likely to prevail over the equatorial Pacific Ocean and there is a possibility of development of negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) conditions over the Indian Ocean during the monsoon season.
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