-Business Standard Encourages states on short-duration and less of rain-dependent crops, pushes seed availability in case of re-sowing as IMD predicts deficit in rainfall this year Mumbai/ Hyderabad: With the forecast of monsoon rain revised downward, the Union ministry of agriculture has directed states to be ready with contingency plans. Earth Sciences Minister Harsh Vardhan said rainfall would be only 88 per cent of the long-term average from the 93 per cent expected...

-Hindustan Times India’s June-September monsoon, the lifeblood of Asia’s third-largest economy, will most likely be “deficient” this year with the met department downgrading its forecast from 93% to 88%, earth sciences minister Harsh Vardhan said on Tuesday.   The India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) revision -- which had forecast “below normal” monsoon in April -- will potentially toughen challenges for the Narendra Modi government already battling a farm crisis triggered by unseasonal rains in...

-Hindustan Times Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh is staring at a drought worse than last year’s, officials said on Thursday, raising worries of a severe impact on the kharif crop crucial to feeding millions of people in the country’s most populous state.   The state government has put 70 out of the 75 districts on high alert and also prepared a contingency plan after the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) forecast a below normal monsoon this...

-CaravanMagazine.in “If I see clouds forming in the sky, the first question that comes to my head is whether I have forecasted it,” BP Yadav, head of the weather forecasting division at the India Meteorological Department (IMD), told me when I met him on 25 April. Yadav’s office, on the second floor of the IMD building that overlooks the Lodhi Gardens in Delhi, is equipped with three LCD monitors that present...

-Down to Earth Over the years, research has shown there is an association between El Nino and deficient rainfall in India According to a few recent weather forecasts, the world is headed for an El Nino event. The recent data shown by Australian Bureau of Meteorology shows that the tropical Pacific has continued to warm in the past week and the sea surface temperatures now exceed El Niño thresholds and trade winds...