Title: India to launch $75m
mission to forecast rains
Date: July 2, 2012
By: Pallava Bagla
By Pallava Bagla
Delhi
A significant shortfall in rain can trigger drought, which
can cause great damage to India's 235 million farmers.
There have been reports that this year's monsoons have been
less than satisfactory so far.
"Understanding the monsoon will be a major priority of
the government for the next five years," says Shailesh Nayak, a senior
official in the ministry of earth sciences.
He said efforts will be made to understand the rains using
computer models developed by the UK and the US and gathering fresh data.
Forecasting the monsoon is a tricky task, as India's meteorologists have discovered time and again.
Last year they predicted a bad monsoon, but in the end the
rains turned out to be in excess of what was forecast.
In its 137-year history the IMD has never been able to predict a drought or a flood - the two extremes of a monsoon season - successfully.
Experts say scientists all over the world struggle to
forecast weather patterns.
They say the IMD does a "commendable job, putting its
reputation on the block" by making monsoon forecasts every year.
Monsoon watchers like Prof J Srinivasan from the Indian
Institute of Science says seasonal forecasts for drought and floods are
relatively accurate for the Sub-Saharan region in Africa, but no agency in the
world has ever been able to predict a drought or flood for the Indian region.
The US weather office also struggles to predict droughts for
North America but there have been occasions where they have been able to make seasonal
drought forecasts, experts say.
Pallava Bagla is a
correspondent for Science magazine
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