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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, Sept. 18 A Rs 900-crore package for modernising and restructuring the country’s meteorology services is ready for the Cabinet clearance, says Mr Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences.

Speaking to Business Line here, he said that the ultimate aim is “to give to this country by year 2013, the most modern Met system anywhere in the world.” The policy will have set the stage for theses services to take off in a big way.

Drawing an analogy, he said this is a milestone being pursued with a zeal that has marked the events leading to the proposed launch of the country’s tsunami warning facility at INCOIS (Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services) in Hyderabad on October 15.

Explaining the initiatives on the Met services front, he said the Government has proposed to collaborate with the State Met agency of France. This will help establish connectivity among our instrumentation systems, which are in the process of being digitised.

The inter-operability of data collected through this instrumentation will help in the interpretation of the same in a language that the public is able to comprehend. Due care will be taken to develop the needed human resources, which forms part of the overall project.

“In fact, we ourselves are restructuring the department and even the Ministry as a whole in order to develop the needed human resources,” the Union Minister said.

A new Met policy is in the draft stage of preparation. The ultimate objective is to achieve digitisation of the Met department. It needs over 50 Doppler radars, 4,000 automatic rain gauges, 1,200 automatic weather stations, a network of wind profilers, and their real time connectivity. A 24x7 weather channel will be launched to provide public and users best possible weather inputs in real time.

“We need new modelling systems and then to connect with all other Met agencies in the world so that we get inputs from everywhere. Indigenously developed systems will enable us to give to the farmer, at the district level, the kind of information needed to ensure that he sows the right seed at the right time to get maximum productivity.”

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