Press Release: Monsoon foreshadow symposium New Delhi, Saturday May 05, Skymet organized a symposium foreshadowing the

monsoon of 2012 held at the Taj Vivanta in Mumbai on May 4, 2012. The event was widely attended by members of the industry (including those from energy, insurance, agri-information, agri-input, policy), government agencies, academicians and members of the Press. Mr. Nadir Godrej, Managing Director, Godrej Industries and Chairman, Godrej Agrovet Ltd., honored the symposium by being the chief guest. In his opening speech, Mr. Godrej applauded the endeavors made by Skymet to make weather forecasting a more consumable service and for spreading its reach across industry and agriculture sectors. He rooted for enhanced participation of the private sector in the domain of weather and monsoon prediction. The symposium was guided by Mr. Jatin Singh, CEO, Skymet who introduced the foreshadow of monsoon 2012. The symposium was followed by speakers analyzing the impact of monsoon on various sectors and how weather forecasts help businesses. The speakers were Mr. Kolli Rao, Chief Risk Officer, Agriculture Insurance Company of India (Crop Insurance), Mr. Prasad Dahapute, MD & CEO, Varhad Capital (Indian Economy and Money Markets), Mr. P. Varshney, Senior Vice President, PTC India (Power & Energy markets), Mr. G. Chandrashekhar, Associate Editor, The Hindu Business Line (The effect of monsoons on commodity prices), Mr. D. R. Sikka, Former Director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune (Droughts and the Indian monsoon), Mr. Dhananjay Naik, Account Manager, Nokia (on How Skymet helped Nokia reach out to its consumers in the farming sector), Dr. NVK Chakravarty, Chief Agro-Meteorologist, Skymet (Impact of Monsoon: Foreshadow on Agriculture) and Mr. Ashok Nair, Vice President-Operations, Reuters Market Light (on their Skymet experience) with question and answer sessions in between. Skymets foreshadow on monsoon 2012 is a 60-40 split between normal and below normal: 60% chance of normal-above normal rainfall 40% chance of below normal rainfall and drought 10% chance of drought expects an overall rainfall of 95% of LPA

The highlights of the monsoon 2012 foreshadow as envisaged by 10 leading global models were: 10% chance of drought (seasonal rainfall that is less than 10% of LPA) 30% chance of below normal (seasonal rainfall that is between 90% to 95% of LPA) 50% chance of normal monsoon (seasonal rainfall that is between 96% to 104 % of LPA) 10% chance of above normal rain (seasonal rainfall that is between 105% to 110 % of LPA) 0% chance of excess rain (seasonal rainfall that is more than 10% of LPA) LPA is long period average

The global models considered for this analysis are ECMWF (Europe), NCEP (USA), IITM (India), APCC (Korea), Sintex/Jamstec (Japan), CDAC (Centre for development of Advanced Computing, India), IRI, Columbia University (USA), ITEC(JAPAN), MRI (JAPAN) and EUROSIP (Europe). The strengthening of El Nino towards the second half of the monsoon might weaken it, mainly in August and September. The main takeaways on sub regional spatial distribution of seasonal monsoon rain are: Vast portions of India may receive normal monsoon rainfall Higher chance of below normal over East/Northeast /Northwest India Sub regional forecast credibility is inferior with respect to all India