New Delhi, Sep 12 (PTI) The implementation of “Mission Mausam” will improve the understanding of the physical processes in the rapidly warming world, enable weather prediction up to the Panchayat level and improve short- to medium-range forecast accuracy by five to 10 per cent, the Union Earth Sciences Ministry said on Thursday.
At a press conference, M Ravichandran, the secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said the five-year mission will be implemented in two phases.
The first phase, running until March 2026, will focus on expanding the observation network, including the addition of around 70 Doppler radars and 10 wind profilers.
The Union Cabinet approved the mission on Wednesday, allocating Rs 2,000 crore for the first phase which also includes setting up of a “cloud chamber” at the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology to study physical processes within clouds.
“During the first phase, 60-70 new radars will be installed in the next 18 months. We already have 39 doppler radars functioning. Ten wind profilers and 10 radio metres will also be set up,” Ravichandran said.
“We will also conduct an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) in the first phase, which will help determine the number of observations needed moving forward,” he said.
The second phase, coinciding with the 16th Finance Commission, will focus on adding satellites and aircraft to further enhance observational capabilities.
Over the five-year period, the ministry and its institutions — the India Meteorological Department, the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and the National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting — will work to improve their understanding of weather and climate processes and prediction capabilities and develop weather management technologies.
Tropical weather forecasting remains challenging due to the complexity of atmospheric processes and limitations in current observation and model resolution.
According to a ministry note, observational data is relatively sparse, both spatially and temporally, and the horizontal resolution of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models, currently at 12 km, makes it difficult to accurately forecast small-scale weather events in India.
Climate change is making the atmosphere more chaotic, resulting in isolated heavy rainfall and localised droughts, which pose simultaneous challenges of flooding and drought. Cloudbursts, thunderstorms, lightning and squalls are among the least understood weather events in India, it said.
“Understanding these complex patterns requires in-depth knowledge of physical processes occurring within and outside clouds, on the surface, in the upper atmosphere, over oceans, and in polar regions. This calls for (a) high-frequency observations at the ground level and across the Earth system with improved spatial and vertical resolutions to monitor Earth’s dynamic systems effectively, and (b) increasing the horizontal resolution of NWP models from 12 km to 6 km to generate Panchayat-level forecasts,” the ministry said. PTI GVS GVS BHJ BHJ
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.