In the wake of devastating floods in Kerala that left 370 people dead and displaced 10 lakh, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has decided to hasten the process of installing a C-Band Doppler Weather Radar in Mangalore by the end of 2019 and a cyclone warning centre in the State. The radar will help to improve extreme weather forecasts, including extremely heavy rains in Kerala.
An extremely heavy rainfall event between August 8 and 16 was responsible for one of the biggest floods the state has experienced in a century
Officials said that along with the existing radars in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, the new one will help the IMD to monitor the entire state of Kerala. “With the addition of the third radar, IMD will be able to issue ‘nowcast’ for Kerala. Nowcast is the forecast for the next couple of hours. Besides, IMD will also set up a high tech ‘cyclone warning centre within a month in the state,” officials said.
The C-Band Doppler Weather Radar is used for forecasting storms, cyclones and other severe weather conditions so that necessary preventative steps can be initiated to alleviate the impact of natural disasters on life and property of millions of people. Presently, IMD has six cyclone warning centres, four along the east coast at Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar and Kolkata, and two along the west coast at Ahmedabad and Mumbai. “The C-Band Doppler Weather Radar will cost Rs 3 crore”, officials added.
“The radar has been developed with the help of ISRO to meet the country’s weather forecast requirements and establish a network to seamlessly cover the regions of interest, thereby ensuring effective weather forecast,” officials said.
Sources also revealed that out of 375 telemetry stations, 222 telemetry stations were non-operational. Interestingly, the the government had planned to set up of 219 telemetry stations, 310 base stations and 100 flood forecasting stations during the 12th plan and only 56 telemetry stations had been installed as of August 2016. Most of the telemetry stations installed were non-functional due to which real time data was not available at these stations.