UPGRADING WEATHER FORECASTING TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA.

J Harsha the Director of Central Water Commission writes that the current weather forecasting technology of India is inadequate.

Most of the Indian states grapples with frequent floods such as Assam,Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

In all these situations the district administration, municipalities and disaster management authorities are the end users who had to act upon immediately after the alert is given by weather forecasting agency just before 24 hours. This could lead to mismanagement of evacuating people from flood prone areas and increase flood hazard.

This system adopted currently is called deterministic flood forecast.

The author stresses on the need to shift to Ensemble forecast that has been already adopted by the U.S ,the European Union and Japan.

Ensemble forecast provides a lead time of 7-10 days ahead with probabilities assigned to different scenarios of water levels and regions of inundation. Lead time is the length of time from issuance of the forecast and occurence of a flood event and it is crucial for risk based decision making and undertake cost effective rescue missions by end user agencies.

What can India do.

The IMD has begun testing and using ensemble models for weather forecast through its 6.8 peta flops supercomputers (Pratyush and Mihir) .

But the weather forecasting agency has to achieve technology parity with IMD. Modernising telemetry infrastructure and raising technology compatibility with river basin specific hydrological , hydrodynamic and inundation modelling is required.

For this the weather forecasting agency needs a technically capable workforce that is well versed with ensemble models and capable of coupling the same with flood forecast models.

Hence,the end users gets adequate time to decide,react, prepare and undertake risk based analysis and cost effective rescue missions.

This article finds place in the GS3 topics. Aspirants have to take special notice of this article as India has to face severe floods every year and we need to find solutions to reduce disaster risks. An effective weather forecasting is also necessary for the betterment of our farmers and thus strengthening food security of India.