RBI Issues Circular On Levying Unfair Interest Charges On Customers

Changes in the sea surface temperature conditions over the Pacific and the Indian Oceans are known to influence the Indian monsoon.

New Delhi: Rainfall during August and September, the second half of the four-month rainfall season, is likely to be on the higher side of normal, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Monday.

“The 2021 August to September rainfall averaged over the country as a whole is most likely to be normal (95 to 105 % of LPA) with a tendency to be in the positive side of the normal. The Long Period Average (LPA) of the August to September period rainfall over the country as a whole for the period 1961-2010 is 428.3 mm,” IMD said in a statement.

The spatial distribution suggests that below normal to normal rainfall is likely over many parts of the northwest, east and northeast parts of the country during August and September, according to the meteorological department. Most parts of peninsular India and adjacent central India are likely to experience ‘normal to above normal rainfall.’

As the changes in the sea surface temperature (SST) conditions over the Pacific and the Indian Oceans are known to influence the Indian monsoon, IMD is carefully monitoring the evolution of sea surface conditions over these Ocean basins, the statement added.

New Strategy

This year, IMD has adopted a new strategy for issuing monthly and seasonal operational forecasts for the southwest monsoon rainfall over the country by modifying the existing two stage forecasting strategy. The new strategy is based on the existing statistical forecasting system and the newly developed Multi-Model Ensemble (MME) based forecasting system. The MME approach uses the coupled global climate models (CGCMs) from different global climate prediction and research centers including IMD’s Monsoon Mission Climate Forecast System (MMCFS) model.

Accordingly, IMD had issued the first stage forecast for the 2021 southwest monsoon seasonal (June to September) rainfall over the country on 16th April and the first update for the forecast on 1st June 2021. IMD had also issued the monthly forecast outlook for June rainfall over country along with the update forecast on 1st June and that for the July rainfall on 1st July 2021.