Context
The recent severe weather events have put the focus back on the country’s weather prediction capacities and ways to enhance them.
Weather Prediction in India
- India, at present, relies upon satellite data and computer models for weather prediction. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) makes use of the INSAT series of satellites and supercomputers.
- In India 3 satellites, INSAT-3-D, INSAT-3DR and INSAT-3DS are used especially for meteorological observations.
- Forecasters use satellite records around cloud motion, cloud top temperature, and water vapor content material that assist in rainfall estimation, weather forecasting, and tracking cyclones.
Initiatives taken to improve the efficiency
- The ‘National Monsoon Mission’ was set out in 2012 to move the nation over to a system that is predicated more on real-time, on-the-ground data gathering.
- The IMD is also increasingly using Doppler radars to improve efficiency in predictions. The wide variety of Doppler radars has expanded from 15 in 2013 to 37 in 2023.
- Doppler radars are used to expect rainfall in the immediate vicinity, making predictions more timely and accurate.
- The weather agency is now using manned and automatic weather stations, aircraft, ships, weather balloons, ocean buoys and satellites to gather data on atmospheric temperature, stress humidity, wind velocity and direction and sea ground temperatures.
- The data are then fed into a supercomputer on the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune.
- The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare have initiated the weather information network and data system (WINDS) under which more than 200,000 ground stations could be set up, to generate long-term, hyper-local weather data.
Challenges
- Lack of weather tracking ground stations: Currently, IMD operates around 800 automatic weather stations (AWS), 1,500 automatic rain gauges (ARG) and 37 doppler weather radars (DWR).
- This is towards the whole necessities of more than 3,00,000 ground stations (AWS/ARG) and around 70 DWRs.
- Lack of coordination: Several Indian State governments and private companies operate a massive community of ground stations (more than 20,000), lots of which aren’t presently utilized by IMD due to inaccessibility and/or reliability of the data.
- Extreme Weather Events: Events, inclusive of extreme rainfall, landslides, and cloudbursts, have turned out to be more common due to climate change. These activities are surprisingly localized and erratic, making them tough to expect with present weather simulation trends.
- Outdated Prediction Models: Currently, most of the prediction software used in forecasting are based on the global forecasting system and weather research and forecasting trends, each of which are not the most current.
- Forecasting weather in the tropics is more challenging than in regions which can be further from the equator, due to more variability in weather phenomena.
- Predicting huge-scale systems like monsoons, cyclones, or heat waves is less complicated due to their massive nature. However localized events like cloudbursts and surprising, sudden weather phenomena are tons tougher to forecast as it should be
- Need for precision: IMD currently has the capacity to forecast weather activities over a 12 km x 12 km location. This grid is bigger than most Indian cities.
- For hyper-nearby forecasts there is a need for 1 km x 1 km forecast.
Way Ahead
- Predicting weather events with a high level of accuracy has come to be more and more important in India, one of the most prone countries to climate change.
- There is an urgent need for an included machine to fill the records gaps. New ground stations must be established and the available information should be shared seamlessly.
- Also the point of interest must be on more integration of artificial intelligence and system gaining knowledge of (AI/ML) in weather forecasting to get more correct consequences.
Source: Indian Express