SouthWest Monsoon likely to advance further into Andaman islands

On May 26, the IMD stated that unfavourable cross-equatorial flow over the Arabian Sea as one of the reasons for advancement of monsoon to other regions.

Monsoon reached the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on May 18, but it is yet to cover the entire region, the IMD said. It further predicted that monsoon would make an onset over Kerala on June 6, five days after its normal onset date.

“The slow pace is because of the lack of cross-equatorial flow in the Arabian Sea,” Mritunjay Mohapatra, PTI quoted the additional director general of the IMD as saying.

Mohapatra attributed the sluggish pace to the unfavourable Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) and anti-cyclonic circulation over the south Indian Ocean that aids the progress on monsoon.

The MJO can be defined as an eastward moving ‘pulse’ of clouds, rainfall, winds and pressure near the equator that typically recurs every 30-60 days. It is a traversing phenomenon and is most prominent over the Indian and Pacific Oceans.