Dedicated unit to map erratic weather events
Recently the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) will set up a dedicated center to provide warnings at short notice. This will help in reducing weather related losses.
According to a report by the Center for Science and Environment (CSE), India will face 314 days of extreme weather events in 2022.
Indian Meteorological Department (IMD)
- The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is the nodal agency for tracking weather events across the country. It comes under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
- The IMD uses the Real Time Analysis of Products and Information Dissemination (RAPID) application along with the INSAT series of satellites for forecasting. Provides quick interactive visualization with rapid 4-dimensional analysis capabilities.
- IMD also collaborates with ISRO for ground-based observations. In these observations temperature, sunshine, wind direction, speed and humidity are measured.
The model used by IMD for forecasting is the Statistical Ensemble Forecasting System (SEFS), which is based on the following:
- sea surface temperature (SST) fluctuations between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific,
- sea surface temperature in the equatorial South Indian Ocean,
- Mean pressure at sea level in East Asia,
- Land surface air temperature in north-west Europe, and the volume of warm water in the equatorial Pacific.
Steps taken to improve weather forecast-
- A target has been set to cover the whole of India by the Doppler Weather Radar Network by the year 2025.
- Urban flood warning system has been introduced in Mumbai (2020) and other cities.
- Fine tuning of the numerical model has been done for better impact based weather forecasting.
- Smart warning systems like Mausam app for weather forecast, Meghdoot app for advisory to farmers have been developed.
Source – The Hindu
