Brace for more rainfall in Aug-Sep: Met

The forecast also says that the quantum of rainfall will be as predicted this year. Last year,there was a deficit of monsoon,up to 22% from the forecast to the actual.

Another senior Met officer said the rainfall in June was 11% below normal but the updated long range forecast for July is 98% and it is expected to be 101% in August.

The Met department expects more wet days with September likely to be the wettest month.

A cooling trend observed in the sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and the phenomenon Nina,are expected to be the contributing factors that will make August and September wetter than the preceding two months.

Award for scientist

PUNE scientist Dr D Sivananda Pai received the Young Scientist award for atmospheric sciences from the Ministry of Earth Sciences on July 26. Pai,head of the National Climate Centre that issues long range forecast for monsoon,has made outstanding contribution in the field of monsoon variability and prediction.

Working as scientist-E and heading the Long Range Forecasting Division of IMD,Pai is an experienced operational weather forecaster and expert in the field of long and extended range prediction. He has worked with teams that developed several operational LRF models and the new two-stage long range forecast strategy of IMD for summer monsoon rainfall.

Pai has published more than 35 papers in referred international journals and reports and presented more than 25 papers in seminars/symposia and workshops. He has suggested a mechanism for the inter annual variability of Indian summer monsoon based on diagnostic studies of global and regional climate anomaly patterns and has also developed a statistical model for the operational forecasting of monsoon onset.