Northeast monsoon expected to be favorable

The coming northeast monsoon is expected to be favorable, Earth Sciences Ministry Secretary Madhavan Rajeevan Tuesday said. He also said an early flood warning system for Chennai, which faced a devastating deluge in 2015, would be tested on an experimental basis during the monsoon, which is the main rainy season for Tamil Nadu.

"There is a good news for Tamil Nadu and predictions are that the monsoon is going to be favourable," he told PTI here on the sidelines of a function. Rajeevan, however, added that official forecast for the monsoon, which is active between October to December, would be released in the first week of next month.

He said Tamil Nadu was geared for the monsoon with a good disaster management team. The Chennai Flood Early Warning System (CFLOWS) will be tested on an experimental basis, he added.

CFLOWS, a comprehensive system meant to predict floods, has been developed jointly by the Earth Sciences ministry's National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR), IITs of Mumbai and Madras, and Institute of Remote Sensing-Anna University.

Rajeevan was here to announce the 4th International Science Festival (IISF - 2018), an annual event, scheduled to be held in Lucknow from October 5 to 8. On the recent floods in Kerala, the worst in over a century, he said the major takeaway from it was the need for a good water management system for dams.

"We have learnt a lot of new things... A good water management system, particularly flood warning system is needed to know the level of water getting into a dam instead of relying on old methods," the official said.

Heavy rains during the south-west monsoon that led to filling up of most dams caused unprecedented floods in Kerala last month, displacing lakhs of people and claiming nearly 500 lives.

Rajeevan said the first of the six proposed observatories as part of the Marine Observation System Along the Indian Coast (Mosaic) would come up in the next three to four months.