The India Meteorological Department has operationalised its location-specific nowcasting weather services across the country.
Through this service, IMD will offer weather forecast for a very short period – one to four hours – using data from Doppler weather radars.
The service, launched through Earth System Science Organisation (ESSO)-IMD, includes web-based inputs, and covers 117 urban centres on experimental basis, a release by the Ministry of Earth Sciences said on Wednesday.
The nowcasting services will cover severe weather (thunderstorms, heavy rainfall from lows/depressions over the land) in 3-6h range, which is regularly monitored through observing systems such as Automatic Weather Stations, Automatic Rain Gauges, Doppler Weather Radars (DWRs) etc.
The monitoring and upgrading of weather forecasting capabilities will provide advance warning to the National Disaster Management Authority, Home Ministry and Ministry of Agriculture to help them tackle the impacts of adverse and extreme weather phenomena.
To capture the characteristics of severe weather in real time, the state-of-the-art 24X7 monitoring system comprising 14-DWRs, located at Agartala, Chennai, Delhi Airport, Delhi-Lodi Road, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Machilipatnam, Nagpur, Patna, Visakhapatnam, Lucknow, Patiala and Mohanbari, is made functional, the release added.
The DWRs at Mumbai and Bhuj are undergoing site acceptance tests while it is under commissioning at Bhopal, it added. The commissioning of DWRs in Goa, Paradip and Karaikal has been put on hold pending clearances from the Defence Ministry, the release added.