THE RAINMAKERS

RAIN may not be top on our minds when the sun is high in the summer sky. But in a building in Pune, a group of men and women sits obsessing over the monsoons. It’s that time of the year when the National Climate Centre at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) gets working round-the-clock to get the rain forecast right.

With the monsoon rains just a month away, the staff at the 60-year-old IMD building called Shimla Office—the name travelled with the office when it shifted from Shimla to Pune—are busy squeezing in extra hours to issue the monsoon forecast for June as well as to announce the onset date of the monsoons in India.

There is none of the paper clutter you would expect to see at a dingy weather office. There are no maps or strange equipment lying around. The Shimla Office is a swanky place where the weather data is available at the click of the mouse.

“Accuracy and preciseness in both space and time” is the target Director General of Meteorology Dr Ajit Tyagi has set for the team.

That’s easier said than done though. It’s difficult to get long-range forecasts right all over the world. This year the IMD is using two different forecast models or parameters to meet the accuracy factor. While they have been using the statistical model for years to forecast the monsoon, this year they are using the dynamical model for better results.

“Our forecast last year for the country was 95 per cent but when the rain came, it recorded 105 per cent. Rainfall all over the country as a whole was in excess in June and September,’’ says Dr Madhavan Rajeevan, Director, National Climate Centre (NCC).

Associated with the IMD for over two decades now, he calls the long-range forecast a tough challenge for meteorologists. “Every minute detail has to be kept in account and every year, the aim is be as accurate as possible.”

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