Meteorol. Atmos. Phys.

71, 255±266 (1999)

1
Regional Meteorological Centre, Civil Aerodrome, Guwahati, India
2
India Meteorological Department, Pune-5, India

Long Range Forecasting Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall

by a Hybrid Principal Component Neural Network Model
P. Guhathakurta1 , M. Rajeevan2 , and V. Thapliyal2

With 8 Figures

Received August 20, 1998

Revised April 20, 1999

Summary range forecasts of summer monsoon rainfall over India as a

The existing methods based on statistical techniques for
long range forecasts of Indian monsoon rainfall have shown
reasonably accurate performance, for last 11 years. Because
of the limitation of such statistical techniques, new
techniques may have to be tried to obtain better results. In
this paper, we discuss the results of an arti®cial neural
network model by combining two different neural networks,
one explaining assumed deterministic dynamics within the
time series of Indian monsoon rainfall (Model I) and other
using eight regional and global predictors (Model II). The
model I has been developed by using the data of past 50
years (1901±50) and the data for recent period (1951±97)
has been used for veri®cation. The model II has been
developed by using the 30 year (1958±87) data and the
veri®cation of this model has been carried out using the
independent data of 10 year period (1988±97). In model II,
instead of using eight parameters directly as inputs, we have
carried out Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the
eight parameters with 30 years of data, 1958±87, and the
®rst ®ve principal components are included as input
parameters. By combining model I and model II, a hybrid
principal component neural network model (Model III) has
been developed by using 30 year (1958±87) data as training
period and recent 10 year period (1988±97) as veri®cation
period. Performance of the hybrid model (Model III) has
been found the best among all three models developed.
Root mean square error (RMSE) of this hybrid model during
the independent period (1988±97) is 4.93% as against
6.83% of the operational forecasts of the India Meteor-
ological Department (IMD) using the 16 parameter Power
Regression model. As this hybrid model is showing good
results, it is now used by the IMD for experimental long-
whole.
1. Introduction
Long range forecasts of Indian summer monsoon
rainfall (June±September) have been very crucial
for proper agricultural planning in India. Besides,
the summer monsoon rainfall activity over India
also has considerable impact on other national
activities such as power generation, water resources
etc. After the initial work of Walker (1910), several
attempts (Thapliyal, 1982; Gowariker et al., 1989,
1991) have been made for developing better
models of long range forecasts of summer mon-
soon rainfall of India. Performance of the Param-
etric and Power Regression models (Gowariker
et al., 1991) have been satisfactory and reason-
ably accurate during last 11 years. These models
are used by the IMD for long range forecasts of
summer monsoon (June±September) rainfall over
India as a whole. Since these statistical models
have some inherent limitations, emphasize is given
to develop better and alternate techniques for
long range forecasts of summer monsoon rainfall
of India.
In this paper, an attempt is made to explore the
potential of neural network technique for long
range forecasts of Indian summer monsoon
256 P. Guhathakurta et al.
rainfall. Recently this technique has drawn
considerable attention from research workers
as it can handle the complex and nonlinear
problems better than the conventional statistical
techniques and has successfully been applied to a
variety of problems. Neural network technique
has a strong potential for pattern recognition and
signal processing problems and it has the ability
to predict for the future value of the time series.
This technique has successfully been applied to a
variety of problems. It has been shown by Elsner
and Tsonis (1992) that neural network can be
used successfully to predict a chaotic time series.
Application of neural network for short term
prediction of air pollutants (Bonzar et al., 1993;
Guhathakurta, 1998) has shown interesting
results. The neural network technique is also
able to learn the dynamics within the time series
data (Elsner and Tsonis, 1992) and long range
prediction models of monsoon rainfall of India
using only time series data of monsoon rainfall
have shown some encouraging results (Goswami
and Srividya, 1994; Guhathakurta and Thapliyal,
1997). However the model using only time series
data of rainfall alone can not give reasonably
accurate forecasts. The accuracy of the model
using time series of rainfall can be improved by
including some of the signals from the coupled
surface-atmosphere system, as the inter-annual
variability of Indian summer monsoon rainfall is
in¯uenced by slowly varying boundary condi-
tions like sea surface temperatures (SST), and
snow cover (Shukla, 1987). Recently, Venkatesan
et al. (1997) have used neural network technique
to predict monsoon rainfall of India by using few
predictors and compared the results with linear
regression techniques. They have found that the
Table 1. Details of the 8 Predictors Used in this Study
S. No Parameter
1. Darwin Pressure Tendency (April±January), DPT
2. East Coast of India Minimum Temperature (March), ECT
3. Nino 3 Index Tendency (MAM-DJF), NI3l
4. NW Europe Mean Temperature (January), NWET
5. NW India Pressure Anomaly (MAM), NWPA
6. NH Pressure Anomaly (Jan±April), NHPA
7. 10 hPa Zonal Wind Anomaly at Balboa, 10HZA
8. Minimum Temperature of NW and Central India (May),
MAYTM
model based on neural network technique
performed better.
We have used the neural network technique to
develop three different types of models for long
range prediction of summer monsoon rainfall
over India. In the ®rst, we have used only time
series data of monsoon rainfall as input to predict
the monsoon rainfall for the future. This model
(Model I) reconstructs the assumed deterministic
dynamics of the monsoon rainfall data. We have
further used eight regional and global parameters
as the predictors which are chosen by examining
their physical linkage with the monsoon and their
degree of relationship with the monsoon rainfall
of India. Since some of these predictors are inter-
correlated, we have carried out principal com-
ponent analysis of these eight parameters and
the ®rst ®ve principal components are taken as
inputs to develop a principle component neural
network model (Model II). Finally these two
models are combined by a two layer (without
hidden layer) hybrid neural network model
(Model III). The performance of the hybrid
model (Model III) has been greatly improved
over other two models.
This paper is arranged as follows. In Sect. 2,
details of the data used are given. In Sect. 3 the
neural network techniques is reviewed. In Sect. 4
to 7 results are discussed and in Sect. 8 con-
clusions are drawn.
2. Data
All India summer monsoon rainfall as a percen-
tage of long period average is used in this study.
For 96 years (1901±1996), the monsoon rainfall
data are taken from available literature (Tha-
C. C. 1958±97 Reference
ÿ0.54 Shukla and Mooley (1987)
0.52 Gowariker et al. (1991)
ÿ0.36 Krishna Kumar et al. (1995)
0.42 Rajeevan et al. (1998)
ÿ0.52 Krishna Kumar et al. (1995)
0.55 Gowariker et al. (1991)
0.42 Bhalme et al. (1987)
0.41 Krishna Kumar et al. (1995)
 Long Range Forecasting Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall
pliyal, 1997). The series has been updated up to
1997. This time series has been prepared as area
weighted mean of seasonal (June±September)
rainfall of 35 meteorological sub-divisions of
India by making use of rainfall data of more than
4000 stations. This is the time series used by the
IMD for operational long range forecasting.
The eight parameters used as the predictors are
given in Table 1. Data of these eight parameters
for the period 1958±1997 were collected from
``Monthly climate data for the world'', and
monthly climate records of the IMD. Nino-3
index was obtained from the Climate Analysis
Centre, National Centre for Environmental Pre-
diction (NCEP), USA. NW India spring mean sea
level pressure anomaly was calculated from the
data of four stations, Bikaner, Jodhpur, Akola and
Nagpur. May Minimum temperature anomaly was
calculated using the data of 7 stations (Nagpur,
Akola, Indore, Bhuj, Jodhpur, Rajkot and Ver-
aval). Darwin pressure tendency and Nino-3 index
tendency represent the ENSO phenomenon. There
are 3 regional parameters, ECT, NWPA and
MAYTM.
3. Brief Review of Neural Network Technique
Neural Networks are signal processing systems
that attempt to emulate the behavior of biological
nervous systems by providing a mathematical
model of combination of numerous basic blocks
called neurons connected in a network. It is
remotely analogous to living nervous system and
hence its name. One can think of neural networks
as an extended form of regression which have the
properties of (i) adaptivity (ii) robustness, (iii)
257
ruggedness, (iv) speed (via massive parallelism),
(v) nonlinearity and (vi) optimality with respect to
error. For regression, we assume a functional form
®rst, such as linear or exponential, and then we
®nd the coef®cients that minimize some measure
of errors, whereas for neural networks, the method
itself extract the functional form from the data. As
input to the model, a historical set of signi®cant
meteorological data is used, where as the output,
monsoon rainfall is predicted by the model. The
network is trained with the past data. By the
proper choice of training sets, after the learning
process, the trained network is capable of
predicting the monsoon rainfalls as an output
according to the inputs and the internal structure
of the network established during the learning
period.
The most common neural network is the feed-
forward mapping network. It consists of a set of
nodes and a set of interconnections between
them. A node contains a computational element
called neuron (Fig. 1), taking inputs from
incoming interconnections (input links) and
providing outputs to outgoing interconnections
(output links). The units of the neural network
are arranged by layers. A unit on one layer takes
inputs from the units on the layer below and
feeds its output to the units on the layers above.
The bottom layer is called input layer whose
units take input from the outsided and without
processing them distribute to the units on the
layer above. The top layer is an output layer
whose output is the output of the neural network.
The layers between input and output layers are
called hidden layers. A pattern is de®ned as a set
of input values with the related output values. A
Fig. 1. Schematic representation of a
simple neuron
258 P. Guhathakurta et al.
Fig. 2. Typical con®guration of a three layer perceptron
neural network
typical computational element takes the weighted
sum of the input links and passes the result
through a transfer function.
The structure of a three layer neural network is
shown in Fig. 2. The transfer function used here
is the sigmoidal function
1
Yˆ ; (1901±1950) of data are used for training and
1‡ e…ÿAx‡B†
where A determines the slope of the sigmoid and
B is the threshold. The process of learning the
training set of patterns means the determination
of the optimum weights which minimize the
mean square error between the output in the
output layer and the desired values. Most com-
monly used ``back-propagation learning algo-
rithm'' (Rumelhart et al., 1986) is used for the
training. Initially random weights between 0.5
are assigned to each weights as initial guesses.
The weights are learned through an iterative
process. During learning the weights are updated
according to the formula.
New weight change ˆ Learning rate  Error
‡ Momentum  Last weight change;
where learning rate and momentum rate are
required to get the convergence faster. When the
network learns the training set of patterns well
enough, it can be used for determining the output
values for the pattern with unknown outputs (Test
period or prediction period).
4. Deterministic Neural Network Model
It has been reported (Satyan, 1988; Basu and
Andharia, 1992) that the time series of Indian
monsoon rainfall has a chaotic behavior. The
method followed by them basically consists of
the reconstruction of the attractor underlying the
time series of monsoon rainfall, estimation of
the attractor dimension and the corresponding
embedding dimension. By using standard method
they have found the embedding dimension D ˆ 7,
for proper reconstruction of the attractor. Finally
they have proposed a prediction function
Rk‡D‡1 ˆ …RK‡1 ; RK‡2 ; . . . ; RK‡D †
and approximated the prediction function by a
second degree polynomial. Higher degree approx-
imations are formidable because of the prohibi-
tively large number of coef®cients.
Since neural network technique is also capable
to explain the nonlinearity of the time series data,
we have applied this technique to reconstruct the
assumed deterministic dynamics of the data. A
three layer neural network model (Guhathakurta
and Thapliyal, 1997) is used. First 50 years
remaining 47 years (1951±1997) are used for
forecast validation. The input layer is structured as
continuous and discrete. For continuous input
layer model, continuous years of past data are
used to predict one year ahead of prediction. From
a different approach by examining the perfor-
mance of the continuous input layer model in the
forecast validation period (1951±1997) for several
number of inputs it is found that seven number
of inputs i.e., immediately past seven years data
gives the optimum result.
For the discrete input layer model, we have to
introduce a gap in the data for input. Here, the
input consists of a set of immediately past years
of data and another set of past years of data by
leaving some years in between i.e., for predicting
(K‡m‡n‡l‡1) year rainfall Rk‡m‡n‡l‡1 inputs
are taken as
Rk‡1 ; Rk‡2 ; . . . . . . Rk‡m ; Rk‡m‡n‡1 ;
Rk‡m‡n‡2 ; . . . . . . ; Rk‡m‡n‡l ;
 Long Range Forecasting Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall 259

Fig. 3. Performance of the de-

terministic neural network mod-
el during the independent period,
1951±1997

leaving n years data in between, the model is layer model during the independent period
tested by seeing the performance in the indepen- (1951±1997).
dent period (1951±97) for different combinations
RMSE ˆ 10:3% and Correlation Coefficient
of m, l (i.e., two sets of input) and n, the number
of gaps. Here m and l are varied from 2 to 9 and n ˆ 0:40:
is varied from 0 to 4. By examining several However, its performance for the 10 year period,
combinations of number of two sets and number 1988±1997 (Table 2) is quiet promising as RMSE
of skipping years, it is found that past 13 years is 8.67% and correlation coef®cient (C.C.)
(l ˆ 5, m ˆ 8, n ˆ 2) give the optimum result between the actual and predicted rainfall is 0.41.
(Guhathakurta and Thapliyal, 1997). The result is
also better than the continuous input layer model.
For both the continuous and discrete input layer
models, ®ve hidden nodes give the optimum 5. Eight Parameter Principal Component
result. Figure 3 shows the performance of the Neural Network Model
model during the independent period (1951± Since the deterministic neural network (Model I)
1997). The following results are obtained did not show useful predictive skill, we have used
regarding the performance of the discrete input eight regional and global parameters as inputs to
develop a neural network model. The eight par-
ameters used in this model are given in Table 1.
Table 2. Performance of the Discrete Input Layer Model Since some of the parameters show strong inter-
During 1988±97 correlations, we have carried out Principal
Component Analysis (PCA) of these 8 param-
Year Actual Predicted
eters. Hsieh and Tang (1998) have recom-
1988 119 98 mended the PCA method as a pre®lter for
1989 101 100 compressing the large spatial data ®eld for
1990 106 104
1991 91 95
training the neural network. PCA is a useful tool
1992 93 85 of transforming original variables into a set of
1993 100 99 uncorrelated variables. It consists of ®nding an
1994 110 107 orthogonal transformation of the original variables
1995 100 97 to a new set of uncorrelated variables, called
1996 103 96 principal components or empirical orthogonal
1997 102 112
functions which are derived in a decreasing order
260 P. Guhathakurta et al.
of importance. The components are linear combi-
nations of the original variable but are orthogonal
and uncorrelated to each other. Geometrically
these linear combinations represent the selection
of a new coordinate system obtained by rotating
the original system so that the new axes represent
the directions with maximum variability and
provide a simple and more parsimonious descrip-
tion of the covariance structure. Other advantage
of the PCA is to reduce dimensionality of the data
as the ®rst few components will account for most
of the variation in the original data and by
truncating the insigni®cant modes, noise level also
is reduced. PCA has been carried out for 30 years
of data, 1958±87. In all models discussed below,
the models are developed using the principal
components of the period 1958±87. Using the
weights/regression coef®cients thus calculated,
independent forecasts are prepared for the inde-
pendent period 1988±97.
All the eight parameters are chosen after a
careful investigation by seeing their physical
linkage and degree of relationship with the
monsoon rainfall. The correlation coef®cients of
each parameter with monsoon rainfall for the
period 1958±1997 are shown in Table 1. All these
parameters are signi®cantly correlated with the
monsoon rainfall. Figure 4 gives the correlation
Fig. 4. Correlation coef®cients for the 15 year
sliding window period of each of the 8
parameters with the all India monsoon rainfall
 Long Range Forecasting Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall
coef®cient values for the 15 year sliding window
period of each of the eight parameters with the
monsoon rainfall plotted against the middle year
i.e., 1965 for the period 1958 to 1972 and so on,
while Fig. 5 a gives the correlation values of each
of the eight parameters with rainfall for the period
1958±87. All the eight parameters are almost
maintaining same degree of relationship through-
out the period, particularly from 1980 onwards.
Therefore the choice of these parameters as
predictors are justi®ed.
261
Fig. 5. a) Correlation coef®cients of each of
the 8 parameters with the monsoon rainfall of
India for the period 1958±1987 and loadings of
b) EOF1 and c) EOF2
Table 3 gives the variance explained by each of
the eigen modes. The ®rst ®ve principal compo-
nents explain 84% of the total variance and we
have used the ®rst ®ve principal components as
inputs in the neural network model. Figure 5b, c
give the loadings of ®rst two eigen modes. The
®rst mode contributes 36% of variation. The C.C.
and loadings of EOF1 show similar pattern among
the 8 parameters.
A three layer neural network model with ®ve
inputs, three hidden nodes of the single hidden
262 P. Guhathakurta et al.

Table 3. Results of the Principal Component Analysis of the technique we have developed a multiple regres-
Predictors sion model using the same ®ve principal
Eigen Mode Eigen Value Cumulative component as predictors. Principal component
Variance data for the period 1958±1987 was used for
EOF1 2.734 34.1 developing the model. The performance of the
EOF2 1.258 49.4 Principal Component Regression Model (Model
EOF3 1.239 65.4 IV) for the independent period 1988±1997 is as
EOF4 0.824 75.7 follows.
EOF5 0.650 83.8
EOF6 0.531 90.4 RMSE ˆ 5:87% and Correlation Coefficient
EOF7 0.469 96.3
EOF8 0.291 100 ˆ 0:69:
Therefore, we have seen that improvement of
the performance of Principal Component Neural
Network Model is only slightly better compared
layer is developed to predict the monsoon rainfall to the Principal Component Regression model
of India. The most used error back propagation but is certainly appreciably better than the
algorithm (Rumelhart et al., 1986) is used for deterministic model (Model I) (RMSE ˆ 8.67%).
training. While training the network special The performances of the 8 parameter Principal
attention has been taken to avoid the local Component Neural Network Model during the
minimum (Master, 1993). The network is trained training period (1958±1987) and veri®cation
for varying number of hidden nodes. By com- period (1988±97) are shown in Fig. 6.
paring the performance of the model both in
training and testing period (1988±1997) it is
found that three number of hidden nodes gives 6. Hybrid Neural Network Model
the optimum performance. Following is the per- Chaotic behavior of the Indian summer monsoon
formance of the 8 parameter Principal Compo- rainfall time series makes it dif®cult to represent
nent Neural Network model (Model II) during it completely by a deterministic process. The
the independent period 1988±1997. Model I which is based on the deterministic
RMSE ˆ 5:74% and Correlation Coefficient process and the Model II which is based on the
ˆ 0:70: stochastic process have shown some success in
predicting summer monsoon rainfall of India. To
To compare the performance of this neural improve the performance further, we have
network model with the multiple regression combined both the models by a simple neural

Fig. 6. Performance of the 8

parameter Principal Component
Neural Network Model during
the training period (1958±1987)
and independent period (1988±
97)
 Long Range Forecasting Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall 263

Fig. 7. Performance of the hy-

brid principal component neural
network model during the train-
ing period (1958±87) and inde-
pendent period (1988±97)

Fig. 8. Schematic diagram showing the details of the models discussed

network model, called the Hybrid Neural Net-
work model (Model III). In this model, we have
considered a simple two layer neural network
without any hidden layer. The input layer of the
hybrid model consists of two input nodes which
are the outputs of the earlier two models (Model
I, based on deterministic process and Model II
based on ®ve principal components), the output
being the rainfall. Therefore in this model there
are only three unknowns, namely two weights
264 P. Guhathakurta et al.

and a bias, values of which are obtained by
training the network. The 30 years (1958±87) of
data are used for the training. The validation is
carried out for the remaining 10 years of data
(1988±97). The following results are obtained
during the forecast validation period.
RMSE ˆ 4:93% and Correlation Coefficient
ˆ 0:80:
The performances of the hybrid model during
the training period 1958±87 and during the
veri®cation period 1988±97 are shown in Fig. 7.
It is seen that out of 10 years in the veri®cation
period, in 6 years (60%), forecast errors are
within one RMSE limit (4.93%) and in the
remaining 4 years, they are within 2 RMSE limit
(9.8%). Thus the hybrid model which was
developed by combining the two networks
performed better than other models both during
the training and independent periods.
The details of the development of all these
models discussed above are also shown schema-
tically in Fig. 8.
7. Comparisons of the model with other models
We have now seen that the performance of the
hybrid neural network model is quite encoura-
ging as the RMSE is less than 5%, whereas the
standard deviation of all India monsoon rainfall
is 10%. The performance of this hybrid model is
compared with the Principal Component Regres-
sion model developed using same ®ve principal
component as the inputs (Model IV in Fig. 8) and
the 16 Parameter Power Regression model
(Gowariker et al., 1991) based on which India
Meteorological Department is issuing opera-
tional long range forecasts of monsoon rainfall.
In all these cases, models were developed by
using 30 years data (1958±1987) and forecast
validations were carried out for the period 1988±
1997. Table 4 gives forecasts based on these
three models along with actual values of
monsoon rainfall of India and the RMSE, and
correlation coef®cients during the independent
period (1988±1997). The results clearly reveal
that the performance of the hybrid neural
network model is far better than other two
models as its RMSE is only 4.93%. The Principal
Component Regression model also performed
better than the 16 parameter power regression
model. We have also compared our results with
the model results of Goswami and Vidya (1996).
Their results are available for the period 1996±
1998. The independent forecasts of the neural
network model of Goswami and Vidya (1996) for
the years 1996±98 are 102%, 99.5% and 111%,
respectively (Goswami and Kumar, 1997). The
realized rainfall of these years are 103%, 102%,
and 105%, respectively. The forecasts based on
the hybrid model developed by us for these years
are 103%, 96% and 105%, respectively. Thus the
present hybrid model performed comparatively

Table 4. Comparison of Different Models During the Veri®cation Period: 1988±97

Year Actual 16 Para 8 Para 8 Para Hybrid
(% of Normal) Power Principal P. C. Neural P. C. Neural
Regression Component Network Network
Model Regression Model Model
Model
1988 119 113 120 112 112
1989 101 101 102 99 99
1990 106 100 110 105 107
1991 91 101 103 101 100
1992 93 96 99 97 94
1993 100 105 100 98 98
1994 110 98 104 102 104
1995 100 103 102 101 101
1996 103 108 104 103 103
1997 102 94 92 93 96
RMSE 6.81% 5.87% 5.74% 4.93%
C.C. 0.51 0.69 0.70 0.80
 Long Range Forecasting Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall
better than the model of Goswami and Vidya
(1996) during this small period.
8. Conclusions
In this paper, we have presented the results of the
models developed for Long Range Forecasting of
Indian summer monsoon rainfall using a new
technique called Arti®cial Neural Network which
is currently being applied to many complex
problems because of its ability to explain the
complex behavior. We have not used either
regression analysis or nonlinear dynamics but
we got the advantage of both of these in the
neural network technique.
The discrete input layer model (Model I) is
constructed by examining all possible number
and combinations of input nodes, hidden nodes,
learning rate parameter and momentum rate to
get the optimum results. The discrete input
layer model can give prediction of monsoon
rainfall by eight months in advance. Though
its performance for the period 1988±1997 is
good (RMSE ˆ 8.67%), its overall performance
is not so satisfactory as the model does not
include any physical mechanisms or forcings of
the inter-annual variation of Indian summer
monsoon.
The eight parameter Principal Component
Model (Model II) performs very well for all the
10 year (1988±1997) prediction period. The
model successfully indicated the normal and
excess years during the period, 1988±1997. The
hybrid neural network model exhibits both the
characteristics of deterministic process and
stochastic process by combining the two differ-
ent network models. The RMSE and the correla-
tion coef®cient between the actual and predicted
values during the independent period indicate its
superiority over other models. We have seen that
the performance of the hybrid model has been
improve over the Principal Component Neural
Network model and Principal Component
Regression model, because the deterministic
process is included in the model. The determi-
nistic model (Model I) for recent couple of years,
especially in 1997, showed good predictive skill.
The year 1997 was a severe El Nino-Year. The
Hybrid model forecast for the year 1997 was
96% as against the realized rainfall of 102%. It
is to be noted that the Principal Component
265
Regression model in which the deterministic
effects are not included forecasted much lower
(92%) rainfall in 1997. The hybrid model and the
Principal Component Regression model (Model
IV) were used for the experimental forecasts in
1998 by the India Meteorological Department.
The forecasts based on these models were 105%
and 107% respectively as against the realized
rainfall of 105%. Better forecast skill from these
models can be achieved by using better pre-
dictors. Identi®cation of better predictors and
diagnostic studies of the inter-annual variability
of Indian summer monsoon are important agenda
in long range forecasting research.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the Director General of Meteorology,
India Meteorological Department (IMD) for giving permis-
sion to publish this paper in this journal. We are also
grateful to Dr. U. S. De, ADGM (Research) for providing
all facilities for this study and for his encouragement.
We also thank two anonymous referees for their con-
structive comments which helped to improve the quality of
the paper.
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Authors' addresses: Dr. Pulak Guhathakurta, Regional
Meteorological Centre, Civil Aerodrome, Guwahati, India,
780 015; Dr. M. Rajeevan and Dr. V. Thapliyal, India
Meteorological Department, Pune-5, India, 411 005