‘Impact-based weather forecasting helps IMD to gain faith among stakeholders’

 

 

“Impact-based weather forecasting and co-ordination with other weather research institutes helped Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) to gain faith among stakeholders and also to predict accurate climate in the region,” said M L Sahu, Deputy Director General (Meteorology), Regional Meteorolog-ical Centre (RMC), Nagpur to The Hitavada on Tuesday. Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India has developed the state-of-the-art weather and climate prediction models which are now operational in all over the country. The models developed under the National Monsoon Mission (NMM) have shown very high skill in predicting important weather events on different time scales during the last three years.

 

The overall objective of NMM is to improve the monsoon prediction all over India on all time scales and hence it is implemented for the whole country which includes all the States and Union Territories (UTs). Talking about the models, Sahu said, “IMD has developed the process of weather prediction by including experts from Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and Indian Institute of Science (IIS), Bangalore.” “We are now co-ordinating with both institutes for weather prediction which helped us to give accurate weather prediction,” he added. IMD has now adopted the process of impact based weather forecast in which the department provide prediction with the impacts of the climatic activities on our daily life. For example, IMD is giving impact of weather activities like cold wave, heat wave, thunderstorm, lightning etc to common public along with prediction. “Impact-based weather forecasting helped us to connect people with the department and we are getting positive feedback also.

 

We have also started taking feedback from stakeholders where 80-90 per cent people accepted the new changes in the process of weather prediction,” said Deputy Director General. IMD operates a network of Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) across India since early 1980s. In order to strengthen the surface observational network, IMD has decided to replace old and obsolete Data Collection Platforms with state-of-the-art satellite linked AWS. “We have improved our AWS and Automatic Rain Gauge Stations (ARGS) in the Central region for better prediction of climate. The sensors for parameters air temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, global solar radiation will be interfaced with each AWS,” Sahu told. IMD has also started using the social media as a mechanism to provide weather information to all stakeholders. Even farmers are appreciating IMD for providing daily weather forecast on WhatsApp groups which is easy for them to get latest information on their mobile phones. Along with WhatsApp, IMD is active on Twitter and Facebook for giving latest weather information. 

 

Six Seismographs for earthquake reading soon in Central region Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) is going to install six new Seismographs for reading the seismic activities in Central region soon. The new Seismographs will be installed at Chhindwara, Jagdalpur, Raipur, Bhopal, Jabalpur and Ambikapur. Deputy Director General (Meteorology) M L Sahu said, “Currently, we have one seismograph each in Akola, Bilaspur and Bhopal. These six equipment will help to read the earthquake activities in the Central region more accurately.”

 

The earthquake activities are increasing in Central region and mostly in Seoni and Chhindwara districts of Madhya Pradesh in last few months. Seoni district recorded many tremors which were recorded by National Centre for Seismology (NCS). “From last many decades, IMD is responsible for reading earthquake activities in the country. We have the equipment and now increasing them to cover whole Central region,” said Sahu. Nagpur also had its own seismograph, but it shifted to Kutch district after 2001 earthquake in Gujarat. However, the seismograph in Akola provide the seismic data for Nagpur district. The installation of Seismograph in Chhindwara has already began and soon the equipment will be functional to monitor the earthquake activities in the region, said Sahu.