In Rough Weather Another glitch in Doppler Weather Radar at airport

 

 

The state-of-the-art Doppler Weather Radar (DWR), installed at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport which is important for accurate weather forecasting, is again non-functional for the last few days due to technical reasons. In the month of July also, the radar stopped working and it took almost one month to rectify the technical error of the radar. DWR, which is attached to the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC), Nagpur of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) is one of the most advanced weather radars in the world. Amid this monsoon season, the DWR is one of the most essential equipment to predict accurate weather forecasting, which covers 500 kms of distance. The DWR is also essential for aviation industry and the non-functionality of the radar is hampering the day-to-day working of RMC and the Nagpur Airport both.

 

Whereas, RMC claimed that the absence of the radar is hardly affecting the weather forecasting as the Weather Department is using satellite images for weather prediction. The radar is capable of predicting the three hours nowcast weather warnings about possible rains, thunderstorm, lightning, etc. in the region. Whereas, the Weather Department is utilising satellite data for nowcast warning. “There is some fault came in the Integrated Circuit (IC) of the radar, which is not available in the country.

 

Therefore, we ordered it from USA and in one or two days, we will receive the IC and the radar will start working,” Shrikant TS, Scientist C and Head, DWR, Nagpur told ‘The Hitavada’. The DWR, since its inception in February 2011, had been non-functional most of the time for various reasons. This C-Band DWR, provides the data of Vidarbha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh region. This foreign-made DWR was procured through SGS Weather and Environment Systems and uses American technology. It can generate information of 1 km to 8 km height from earth surface in a radius of 500 km. There are total 27 DWRs working all over the country and in Central India, only Nagpur and Bhopal have this technology.