Skymet, India’s leading weather forecasting and agriculture risk solutions company, has come out with the ‘Preliminary Monsoon Forecast Guidance for 2022’. Skymet expects the upcoming Monsoon to be ‘normal’.
Skymet has been predicting Monsoon since 2012, except in 2020 when it abstained for strategic reasons. Skymet intends to release a detailed report on the prospects of Monsoon 2022 in April. Skymet is in the process of gathering data sets pertinent for a comprehensive monsoon forecast. Ascertaining authenticity is absolutely essential and that is a long-drawn procedure. Therefore, it is a bit premature to share the collated figures but suffice to present preliminary guidance.
Monsoon has large inter-annual fluctuations in its arrival, intensity, duration, and withdrawal. It is rather early to decode all these aspects at this stage. However, there are precursors to get an early glimpse and gauge its health during the four-month-long season. The last two Monsoon seasons have been driven by back-to-back La Nina events, which has started shrinking now. It also means that Monsoon 2022 is going to be a devolving La Nina to start with and turn neutral later.
Negative sea surface temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific Ocean are weakening. This warming inclination of the Pacific Ocean, albeit within neutral limits, may not lead to an above-normal or excess rainfall but chances of a ‘corrupt’ monsoon are also ruled out. This could be one of the ‘normal’ monsoon years making a robust start and finishing around the midway mark of the normal range, the range of normal rainfall is 96-104% of LPA (880.6mm).
According to AVM GP Sharma, President – Meteorology and Climate Change, Skymet Weather, “After observing back-to-back La Nina during 2020 & 2021, the chances of yet another episode is ruled out, statistically. The Sea Surface Temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are likely to rise soon and the probability of continued La Nina will fall. However, ENSO predictability decreases during the upcoming ‘spring barrier’ and at times leads to an unstable ENSO regime. This will get factored in our April forecast. While the monsoon trough is over the South Tropical Indian Ocean, IOD events are typically unable to form till April. Reliable trends of ‘Indian Ocean Dipole’ emerge in the latter half of it. Early indications suggest it to be ‘neutral’ but leaning close to the negative threshold. IOD-ENSO interaction will hold the key to the overall health of Indian Summer Monsoon 2022”.
Skymet is India's largest weather monitoring and agri risk monitoring company. It has expertise in measuring, predicting, and limiting climate risk to agriculture. For the past 15 years, Skymet has been catering to weather analytics and data needs of media, insurance and agriculture. Government of Maharashtra, Government of Gujarat, NSDMA, SBI, USAID, Reliance Infra, World Bank, HDFC ERGO, IFC, Agriculture Insurance Corporation of India Limited (AICIL), ICICI LOMBARD, The Hindustan Times, The Hindu and The Telegraph have been some of its clients. Skymet is backed by ag-tech venture capitalist Omnivore Partners, InsuResilience Investment Fund and dmg::information.