Chasing the storm

Everybody knows the quintessential Indian weatherman joke — “If the weatherman says it’s not going to rain, take your umbrella along.” While the severest critics and cynics might still stand by this, a little-known yet extraordinary achievement by the IMD should be enough to change the minds of doubters.

On October 9, 2013, a good three days before Cyclone Phailin’s landfall, LS Rathore, the director general of the IMD, and his team stated that the cyclone would hit the coastline near Gopalpur, Odisha. And on October 12, the cyclone made landfall within 3km of the predicted mark, as close to a zero-error prediction as humanly possible. The IMD’s call stood out, especially since in the world of meteorology, predicting the landfall of tropical cyclones even within a 50-100km error margin is seen as accurate. They had also anticipated that Phailin would be a Very Severe Cyclonic Storm (VSCS), a grade lower than a super cyclone forecasted by meteorologists in the US. With a wind speed of 210km/hr (minimum requirement for a super cyclone classification is 222km/hr), the IMD had got this right too. In retrospect, there was property loss due to Phailin, but loss of life was minimal. Thanks to IMD’s intervention, evacuation efforts had begun days before the cyclone hit Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

On the right track

For Rathore and his team, the near-accurate prediction was only one of the more visible qualitative outputs of an ongoing process. “Phailin was relatively easy, it was Madi which gave us a lot of trouble,” says BK Bandyopadhyay, a senior scientist at the department, adding, “Madi was more difficult because it changed direction before hitting the coast.”

On the morning of December 6, when M Mohapatra, head of the Cyclone Forecast Division at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) was asked if the depression over Bay of Bengal, later christened Cyclone Madi, was a threat, he had calmly said no.

“We have a standard operating procedure. By looking at numerical models, wind flow, wind-shearing patterns and other inputs, we traced its exact trajectory in advance. We reached the conclusion that it wouldn’t hit the coastline,” says Mohapatra. “Madi was an in situ condition, not forced by any earlier weather event, but we observed the developments and decided that once it crosses 13°N latitude, it would change course. Even though it was a VSCS, the atmospheric and oceanic conditions and our readings of it, pointed towards this shift,” he says. The National Disaster Management Association (NDMA), just recovering from Phailin was more than relieved to hear this. The prediction came almost a week before the actual event mimicked the pattern that the IMD had outlined.

Mapping anew

Since LS Rathore took over at the IMD two years ago, there have been seven cyclones in the subcontinent — Mahasen, Thane, Helen, Neelam, Lehar, Phailin and Madi. And in all of these cases, the weathermen avoided any major loss of life by making accurate forecasts, or by getting close enough to the predicted ground location.

Following the creation of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) in 2005, a modernisation plan in three phases (at a reported budget of ₹920 crore) was put into force in 2009. “Two phases were completed and within the next few years, the final phase should be over too,” says Rathore. Accordingly, IMD’s observation, communications and computational systems were upgraded, the National Weather Forecast Centre in Delhi was revamped, High Performance Computing Systems were installed, Doppler Weather Radars planted along the coastlines, especially the eastern coast, and the number of Automated Weather Stations, over 1,000 and counting, added to.

Meanwhile, organisations like the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, and the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai, which are also under the MoES, have been exchanging information and sharing data with the IMD. “It is a two-way process. While they provide us oceanography-related information, we provide them meteorological updates,” says Rathore.

In many ways, Rathore has always been at the forefront of IMD’s modernisation. When the department’s first supercomputer was setup in 1989, he was selected as the principal scientific officer. “With the recent developments as well as the information we receive from satellites like INSAT and Kalpana-1, which provide updates every 30 minutes, our predictions have been foolproof,” he says. “When I joined IMD, we plotted data manually, a cumbersome process. Now we can load data into numerical models and tabulate to make a forecast.”

While Rathore admits that there’s a tendency to play it safe, he is quick to point out that apart from Phailin and Lehar, IMD has not recommended evacuation for any of the other major cyclones. “The public at large probably don’t understand what goes behind these decisions, but we have to be careful not to trigger alarm. It’s a very thin line at times, so we are forced to take informed risks. But I make the final call and I do it after hearing from my best people,” says Rathore.

While the cyclonic and other extreme weather-related predictions place IMD in the spotlight, other routine, but equally important efforts often go unnoticed. Not only does the department have its finger on the pulse of India’s weather, but it also maps the conditions for the entire region. “The Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre (RSMC) is part of the IMD as well,” says Mohapatra, “From Myanmar to Oman, it all falls under our purview. Every day, we also send across a Tropical Weather Outlook to several countries.” With regards to any major weather event in the region, the RSMC takes the final call.

Since 2012, a five-day weather forecast is sent out, a major improvement from few years ago when only 24-hour forecasts were provided by the department. They have also increased the frequencies of specialised forecasts for agriculture, aviation and marine navigation, and are looking to foray into new areas, such as forecasts for industries. “Everything is weather -sensitive, even human efficiency. Knowing how the next day or month is going to be can help industries and businesses make their plans,” says Rathore.

At Mausam Bhavan, the IMD headquarters on Delhi’s scenic Lodhi Road, there are a series of portraits of previous IMD heads in the foyer, including that of Sir John Eliot, the first director general. Appointed in May 1889, Eliot could have scarcely predicted the fair weather at the Mausam Bhavan today. Had he been alive, perhaps, he might have even carried his umbrella, if the IMD’s forecast was cloudy with a chance of rain.

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