Mission Mausam Phase II: IMD to establish 200 automatic weather stations
Earth sciences ministry secretary M Ravichandran cited the geopolitical situation and said India needs to rapidly upgrade ocean observations
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) will establish 200 automatic weather stations (AWSs) and upgrade land and ocean observational systems as part of Phase II of Mission Mausam, which seeks to make the country weather-ready and climate-smart, to be launched by April.
Speaking on the occasion of IMD’s 151st Foundation Day on Thursday, earth sciences ministry secretary M Ravichandran said Mission Mausam Phase II would involve a massive up gradation of observational systems.
The upgrade will begin with the installation of 20 AWSs in Delhi this month. Other new AWSs will be established in important cities such as Mumbai and Chennai. There are around 1,000 AWSs in India.
Ravichandran cited the geopolitical situation and said India needs to rapidly upgrade ocean observations, as the country’s seasonal predictions, especially for the monsoon, are completely dependent on ocean parameters. “We are also asking other countries to upgrade their ocean observations so we are not dependent on one country,” said Ravichandran. The US provides 50% of the ocean observations.
Ravichandran said monsoon forecasts have improved from 7% error margin to 2%, mainly because of ocean observations. “...we need deep ocean parameters...up to 100 km from the coast, coastal radars, etc. For short-term forecasts, we need AWSs, whereas for medium and long-term forecasts, ocean observations are critical because the ocean has that memory,” he said.
Monsoon is the lifeblood of India’s economy. According to the agriculture ministry, 51% of India’s farmed area, accounting for 40% of production, is rain-fed, making the monsoon critical.
The 200 new AWSs will be installed to improve the forecast of extreme rainfall and other weather events in cities. “There was a time when there would be uniform rainfall over a 100 km stretch. Now it has reduced to 10 km. Very soon, we will see highly localised events, say over 1 km. So we need 1 km resolution observations. That is why the number of AWSs is being increased,” said Ravichandran.
The IMD increased the number of radars to 46 during Mission Mausam Phase I. It unveiled Bharat Forecasting System, a high-resolution (6 km) numerical global model for operational forecasts up to the panchayat level to help address extreme rainfall events, among other things.
Ravichandran said the IMD has had mixed results with AI models. “They have definitely improved forecasts, but we cannot depend on AI alone,” he said. “For the Phase II of Mission Mausam, we need a huge number of observations in terms of gaps we need to fill wherever the observations are not available. This is not only from the ground, but also from the upper air observations. We need to use the aircraft observations.”
He said India also needs to develop a mechanism to measure the boundary layer observations by drones. “And more importantly, it is not only for the land, but also we need to cover the ocean. ...we need to go to coastal regions and polar regions. So, the first important task is to augment more and more observations,” Ravichandran said. “The forecast in the tropical weather is not so easy. ...we need observation to understand the process and try to model it better.”