New Delhi: The weather office will issue the
much-awaited southwest monsoon forecast for this season on
Friday, Earth Sciences Minister Prithviraj Chavan said today.
"We will be issuing the monsoon forecast on Friday
evening," he told reporters when asked how he expected the
annual rains to fare this season.
Officials who did not wished to be named said that they
expected a better monsoon this year than the previous year.
The country had witnessed one of the worst droughts in
recent times when the monsoon had failed last year.
A normal monsoon is necessary to power the Indian economy
as over 235 million people depend on agriculture.
Chavan said the weather scientists were awaiting some
more inputs on the weather patterns before they could finalise
this year's forecast.
Some private weather forecasters have predicted an
erratic start to this year's monsoon season which according to
them would pick up towards the end bringing good rains in
August and September.
"I have seen reports about private forecasters. People
have done their own thing but we will issue our forecast on
April 23," Chavan said.
Last month, Geneva-based World Meteorological
Organisation (WMO) said El Nino had peaked, but was expected
to influence climate patterns up to mid-year before dying out.
El Nino is an occasional seasonal warming of the central
and eastern Pacific Ocean that upsets normal weather patterns
from the western seaboard of Latin America to east Africa.
-PTI
First Published: Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 22:33