With a view to helping the farmers with accurate, localised weather reporting, the Ministry of Earth Sciences has planned to enhance its meteorological forecasting capability. Under this plan, weather observatories will be set up at the district level to predict accurate weather at the block level.
Under the plan, a total of 6,500 weather observatories will be set up across the country. Union Minister for Earth Sciences, Dr Harshvardhan told The Pioneer that once the weather observatories are set up, the MeT department would be able to forecast the weather at block level.
“Two high performances super computers have already been set up-one in Pune and Noida to this effect,” he said. The modernisation program will help the country forecast rain in a small geographical area. This will also help to procure advance information on natural disasters, create climate models and study oceans.
Accurate and targeted weather forecasts are critical in India, where rain is the lifeline for about 880 million villagers who directly or indirectly depend on farming for a living. India is the world’s second-biggest grower of rice, wheat and sugar.
The supercomputers will generate high-resolution models to help scientists at the ministry of earth sciences provide block-level weather forecasting data. Data is currently available at the district level.Besides helping farmers, the supercomputers will assist in the development of high-resolution models to enhance the forecast of extreme weather conditions and natural disasters. The supercomputers will boost the department’s data processing capacity by more than 6 times. The agency is also adding more Doppler radars that measure the velocity of clouds and winds and has approached the ISRO to install more weather monitoring equipment on satellites.
As per officials, the Ministry of Earth sciences will send a proposal to the Government for spending Rs 2,000 crore ($308 million) in five years to install more radars, supercomputers and special observatories.