"India is continuously improving its weather forecasting system"

The Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Y.S.Chowdary in a reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday said that during the past few years, the Earth System Science Organization-India Meteorological Department (ESSO-IMD) has been continuously improving weather prediction services in terms of accuracy, lead time and associated impact.

He said to improve further the ESSO-IMD had taken following steps:

(i) upgradation of observation systems (ii) advanced data assimilation tools (iii) advanced communication and IT infrastructure (iv) high performance computing systems and (v) intensive/sophisticated training of ESSO- IMD personnel to facilitate the implementation of advanced global/regional/ meso-scale prediction models for improving the accuracy of weather forecasts in all temporal and spatial scales and for quick dissemination of weather forecast assessments/warnings to the users.

The High Performance Computing (HPC) systems have been recently up-scaled to 1.2 petaflops to support the ongoing efforts for enhancing the weather forecasting capacities through assimilating all available global satellite radiance data for the production of forecast products at 22 km grid globally and 9km/3km grid over India, regional or /mega city domains.

Through Indo-US collaboration, a “Monsoon Desk” has been set up for working jointly for improving seasonal forecast of the Indian monsoon rainfall. Through this forum, Indian and US Scientists are exchanging their ideas and sharing their expertise.

This effort has led to appreciable improvements in the efficiency of models in making better forecasts, Chowdary added.