- Private weather forecaster Skymet has said that it expects the 2019 monsoon to arrive in Kerala on June 4 and make a sluggish progress thereafter. It has warned that the monsoon would begin under the influence of the El Niño, which is likely to have its impact on the rainfall.
- According to the agency, all the four regions viz. central India, east and north-eastern states, southern peninsula and north-west India will witness less than normal rainfall. Central India is expected to see the lowest rainfall in the region with seasonal rains at 91% of its Long Period Average.
- Normal’ rainfall is defined as 96%-104% of the long period average (LPA), with a model error of plus or minus 5%. The LPA is the weighted average of rainfall that India received in June-September from 1951 to 2000 and is pegged at 89 cm.
- El Nino refers to the large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate interaction linked to a periodic warming in sea surface temperatures across the central and east-central Equatorial Pacific. It is the periodic development of a warm ocean current along the coast of Peru as a temporary replacement of the cold Peruvian current.
- A strong El Nino results in reduction and uneven distribution of rainfall across the Indian sub-continent. This is because the trade winds coming from South America which normally blow westward towards Asia during Southwest Monsoon gets weakened due to the warming of the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, moisture and heat content gets limited and this leads to poor rainfall in the region.
Southwest monsoon likely to set in over Kerala on June 4
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