New Delhi:
After its predictions went wrong this year, the weather office is mulling doing away with issuing summer monsoon forecasts and replacing them with weather outlook for every month, a top official said on Thursday.
The monsoon forecast of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) went awry this year with the country receiving 23 per cent deficient rain than normal as was predicted by the weather scientists in April.
"We are considering issuing weather outlook for the month as against forecast for the season," the official said adding that weather scientists have been able to perfect forecasting techniques for the short-term.
A meeting of weather scientists from across the country is scheduled to be held some time next month to discuss the matter, he said.
The IMD, in its long-range monsoon forecast in April, had predicted a near normal monsoon this season with the country receiving 96 per cent rainfall of the Long Period Average (LPA). LPA is the average of the monsoon rains the country received between 1941 and 1991, which is 89 cm.
The IMD revised its prediction to 93 per cent in an update to its forecast issued in June. It further downgraded the forecast to 81 per cent in an unprecedented second update issue in July.
The country received only 77 per cent rainfall of the LPA this monsoon season, which concluded officially on September 30.
This season saw a delay in onset of monsoon over the entire country but good rains in July-August and a couple of wet spells in September brought cheer to farmers who were a worried lot when the rainfall had almost disappeared for the entire June.
Of the 36 meteorological sub-divisions, 13 got normal to excess rains while in 23 monsoon was deficient.
The northwest region was the worst hit as it received 36 per cent deficient rains of the LPA. In northeast, the deficiency was 27 per cent of the LPA, while in central and peninsular India it was 20 per cent and four per cent less than the LPA respectively.
The erratic monsoon was a result of cyclone Aila, which devastated parts of West Bengal and Orissa on May 25, weakened the monsoon flow.
This situation was further worsened due to the high pressure area over Central Asia which blocked weather systems that bring rain to the country.