The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed that a passing Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) wave is engineering the current spurt in rainfall over South India.
Last week saw an increase in rainfall over the northern tropical Indian Ocean, including southern India, the Bureau noted in an update.
Two scenarios
In contrast, Southeast Asia, the Philippines and the northwest Pacific region have seen another week of suppressed tropical activity.
But the Bureau said that forecasts for the MJO wave offered little guidance for the coming week with two potential scenarios being expressed by an ensemble of models.
Either the wave will further strengthen over the Indian Ocean without much movement, or it will weaken rapidly such that it will cease to be a significant driver of tropical weather in the coming weeks.
If it were to remain slow moving and strengthen over the tropical Indian Ocean, convection would likely be enhanced over the Indian Ocean.
Peaking activity
International models are seeing a busying of activity over the southeast Arabian Sea, just to the southwest of the Kerala coast from as early as tomorrow.
The activity would peak towards the middle of next week as it sparks formation of a cyclonic circulation (not amounting to a low-pressure area) near Mangalore.
A trough has formed over land as if in preparation, linking Rayalaseema with the Comorin region, an India Met Department update said this morning.
A deep trough from West Bengal linking north coastal Andhra Pradesh is forecast to push its own rain wave into interior Maharashtra over the next couple of days.
Fresh spell
This will be pushed further north into central India by the circulation forming over Mangalore.
The cyclonic circulation off the Tamil Nadu coast persists, but may not last beyond another day given the presence of competing systems just to its north (north coastal Andhra Pradesh) and the emerging one over Mangalore.
The overall scenario is that most of peninsular India will have been brought under a fresh spell of rain during this week and into the next.
A Met Department outlook said that northeast India, south interior and coastal Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry will receive moderate to heavy rainfall during the next three days.
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