The LPA of the seasonal rainfall over the country as a whole for the period 1951-2000 is 89 cm. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recently released the long range forecast for the 2016 southwest monsoon season rainfall. 

The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, Ministry of Earth Sciences, has been coordinating and working along with different climate research centers from India and abroad on the development of a coupled model for the forecasting of Indian summer monsoon rainfall under the Monsoon Mission project. The latest high resolution research version of the Coupled Forecasting System (CFS) originally developed by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), USA has been used to generate experimental forecast for the 2016 southwest Monsoon season rainfall using the February initial conditions.

This experimental forecast based on the Monsoon Mission coupled dynamical model suggests that the monsoon rainfall during the 2016 monsoon season (June to September) averaged over the country as a whole is likely to be 111% ± 5% of long period model average (LPMA). 

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) issues various monthly and seasonal operational forecasts for rainfall during the southwest monsoon season. Operational forecasts for the southwest monsoon season (June – September) rainfall are issued in two stages. The first stage forecast is issued in April and the second stage forecast is issued in June.

India Meteorological Department will issue the update forecasts in June, 2016 as a part of the second stage forecast. Along with the update forecast, separate forecasts for the monthly (July and August) rainfall over the country as a whole and seasonal (June-September) rainfall over the four geographical regions of India will also be issued.

As the sea surface temperature conditions over the Pacific and Indian Oceans particularly the ENSO conditions over the Pacific (El Nino or La Nina) are known to have strong influence on the Indian summer monsoon, IMD is carefully monitoring the sea surface conditions over the Pacific and the Indian oceans.