India has set in motion an ambitious plan to establish a network of 100 radars across the country by March 2026 to boost its weather forecasting observations. With 39 radars already functional, the target is to add around 61 S-band, C-band and X-band radars with varying detection range.
While the S-band radars have a detection range of 400 km, the range for C-band is up to 200 km, while it is 100 km for X-band. At present, India has a radar at every 432 km in comparison to the US, which has one at every 150 km.
“Tropical weather patterns are much more chaotic and variable. So, there should not be any place without a radar. In the next five years, we will set up that infrastructure which will improve our forecasting skills tremendously, and also help us manage the weather. This is just the first phase,” said Dr M Ravichandran, Secretary to the Ministry of Earth Sciences. “We will start issuing the tenders soon.”
The Rs 2,000 crore Mission Mausam to make India ‘weather-ready’ and ‘climate smart’ will kick-start this September and will be chiefly led by the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The plan is to also add Vertical Wind Profiles, and radiometres at 15 locations, and increase the number of radiosondes from the existing 54. These instruments will provide day and night data for wind direction, temperature and humidity up to an altitude of 12 km – every 15 minutes.
The mission target is to improve the weather forecasting at city-levels and have better spatial resolution than the existing 12 km. This will also enable IMD to issue Nowcast warnings for rains an hour in advance – up from 3 hours at present.
FIRST CLOUD SIMULATION EXPERIMENT IN NEXT FIVE YEARS
The mission will also pave the way for setting up a ‘Cloud Chamber’ – a laboratory to study artificial rain at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune. Here the scientists will artificially create clouds to be able to modify them as per need.
“We want to be able to do weather modification, and artificially suppress and enhance rain. For this we need to study how cloud forms at varying altitudes. The lab will be set up in next 18 months, and by next five years, we want to be able to at least do some simulation for modifying rain or hail within the laboratory,” he added. “We want to explore the science of weather intervention. In the long-term, we want to learn how to manage weather better.”
AIRCRAFT, NEW SATELLITES AND ‘MAUSAM GPT’ IN FIVE YEARS
The first phase of 18 months, starting September will mainly focus on atmospheric observations, and then ramp up observations over the oceans and space. In the second-phase, the plan is to bring more aircraft, Doppler Wind Radars and new earth-observation satellites.
The mission will also look to improve air quality forecast, and eventually improve the weather models by integrating the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). In the next five years, the plan is also to launch ‘Mausam GPT’ to make the weather forecasts readily available to people across the country.
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