The South-West Monsoon is likely to hit the Kerala coast on June 3 this year, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Wednesday. The onset forecast has an error margin of four days, IMD said in a statement.
The normal onset of monsoon over the Kerala coast is around June 1. However, last year, monsoon rains had hit the Kerala coast four days after June 1 onset forecast.
IMD said monsoon normally advances over the Andaman Sea around May 20, with a standard deviation of about one week.
However, this year, under the influence of tropical cyclone Mahasen, currently located over the central Bay of Bengal, monsoon may advance over the Andaman Sea slightly earlier than the normal date.
However, the onset over Andaman has little bearing on the date of onset over Kerala or on the seasonal monsoon rainfall over the country, it added.
Likely to br normal
For the year ahead, IMD has predicted that monsoon is most likely to be normal. Quantitatively, the average rainfall is expected to be 98 per cent of the normal long period average (LPA) of 89 cm during the four-month season starting June 1 to September 30.
LPA is the average of seasonal rainfall over the country as a whole from 1951 to 2000.
In fact, last year, monsoon was below normal at 92 per cent of LPA at 81.9 cm, though the forecast was 99 per cent.
A good monsoon is crucial for the agriculture sector, which accounts for around15 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), as 70 per cent of the farm lands are rain dependent.
It also should help contribute to the overall economic growth while easing concerns on food inflation, which has reversed the trend recently.
The IMD is expected to gather data till May-end before making the region-wise prediction some time in early June.
The South Asia Climate Outlook Forum (Sascof) at its recent summit in Kathmandu had observed that most of the mainland India will see normal rains this year.
Deficient rain
However, the Sascof forecast had also pointed out that areas in South India, including entire Kerala, most of Tamil Nadu and South Interior Karnataka would witness deficient rains this monsoon.
Already, large parts of Peninsular India are under a dry spell, where the water levels in many reservoirs have reached record low levels, affecting the summer planting of rice and sugar cane.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Chairman C. Rangarajan said the agriculture and allied sectors could achieve a growth of 3.4 per cent this fiscal, if the country receives normal monsoon.
Agri-sector growth
The agri-sector grew by a mere 1.8 per cent in 2012-13 as drought in parts of the country had affected the crop output.