The Hindu Business Line : IMD project to finetune weather forecasting

A number of organisations, including the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, are involved in the honing of overall prediction skills.

Thiruvananthapuram , Aug. 9

THE Rs 500-crore investment plan for the India Meteorological Department (IMD) is in line with efforts aimed at "changing the face of forecasting" and "fine-tuning prediction skills" to serve the farm sector and the economy at large.

Business Line had on April 20 this year reported that the IMD had teamed up with sister organisations and academic institutions across the country to launch a massive exercise for revamping the forecasting system. It had also said that the efforts were aimed at forecasting weather down to specific regions and locales with huge stakes in the farm sector.

The Government has since announced that, with effect from August 15, latest weather updates and forecasts up to seven days at the district level would be made available on its Web site. It also plans to give farm advisories based on the weather forecast at a district level. An integrated meteorological data reception and analysis system (IMDRAS) has been introduced that would enable IMD to receive processed information even in remote areas through a personal computer. The proposed Rs 500-crore investment plan over the next two years will cover installation of a dense network of satellite-based rain gauge stations for online monitoring and automatic weather surface stations for adequate coverage of weather data. It will also include setting up wind profilers, a complex network of radars for complete coverage of coastal areas for cyclone monitoring.

The first few results of the revamp could be seen in this year's long range forecast itself. Especially, in the decision to divide the erstwhile homogenous meteorological region of the Peninsula into two (North and South) and envisaging separate forecasts for each at the time of announcing the monsoon onset. A number of organisations, including the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, are involved in the honing of overall prediction skills. Samples of data will now be collected from a much largely dispersed geographical area

Amongst all the monsoons of the world, the Indian monsoon has the largest spatial extent and affects not only the country's economy but also those of adjoining countries. It is known to have a significant linkage with the global weather and unanticipated changes in the sea state. Thus, prediction of the monsoon and the associated rains is a challenging task and of considerable interest for scientists.

Tropical weather, with its constantly evolving nature, has proved as a problem for meteorologists. Significantly so in a country like India, a vast majority of whose population depends on rain-fed farming for sustenance. The large-scale dynamics of the tropical atmosphere with the sun and the vast expanse of seas in constant interaction, and the sparse availability of data make forecasting a difficult proposition.

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