Weather Forecast
Government has launched the
National Monsoon Mission to build
state-of-the-art coupled ocean-
atmospheric climate model
framework for a) improved
prediction of monsoon rainfall on
extended range to seasonal time
scale (16 days to one season) and b)
improved prediction of temperature,
rainfall and extreme weather events
on short to medium range time
scale (up to 15 days). Through these
efforts, an appropriate dynamical
prediction system will be
implemented for more accurate
monsoon rainfall prediction on all
spatial and time scales over the
Indian region. The improved system
will help us in issuing more
accurate short range forecasts (up to
3 days) and warnings for extreme
weather events like heavy rainfall
events, active (heavy) and break
(weak) spells during the monsoon
season in advance and more
accurate seasonal forecasts for all-
India monsoon rainfall.
Operational implementation of
improved forecast suite of models
after the commissioning of the High
Performance Computing (HPC)
systems, under the Modernization of
the Earth System Science
Organization (ESSO) - India
Meteorological Department (IMD)
have enhanced the weather
forecasting capacities through
assimilating all available global
satellite radiance data for the
production of finer-scale forecast
products at 22Km grid globally and
9Kms/3Kms grid over India/regional/
mega city domains. The
performance evaluation of the
updated global/meso-scale forecast
systems for the past 5-7 years have
demonstrated enhanced forecast
skill by about 18% quantitatively as
far as the track and landfall
forecasts of the tropical cyclones are
concerned.
As and when the cyclone systems
move in to the 500Km surveillance
range of DWRs, identification of
strong wind zones and pockets of
heavy rainfall within the core
cyclone area is carried out and their
rapid changes are monitored on
continuous basis. IMD currently
operates 5- Doppler Weather Radars
(DWR) at Chennai, Machilipatnam,
Visakhapatnam, Kolkata, Sriharikota
on the east coast along with a
network of Automatic Weather
Stations (AWS) and Automatic Rain
Gauges (ARG) for continuous
weather surveillance over the Bay of
Bengal and Arabian Sea.
There is no proven scientific
technique available, anywhere in
the world, to forewarn/ predict the
occurrence of earthquakes.
Nevertheless, efforts are
continuously made world-over
including India, to monitor and
study various earthquake
precursory phenomena in critical
seismotectonic regions, which
would not only help for advancing
understanding of earthquake
generation processes but also lead to
identifying possible earthquake
precursors, which may serve as
potential predictors in future. As
part of this, a National Program on
Earthquake Precursors (NPEP) has
been initiated, through a multi-
institutional and multi-disciplinary
mechanism to adopt an integrated
approach of generation, assimilation
and analyses of a variety of
earthquake precursory phenomena
in critical seismotectonic
environments in the country in a
comprehensive manner. The ESSO
of the Ministry of Earth Sciences
(MOES) has also launched a major
program on drilling a deep bore
holes in the seismically active
Koyna-Warna region in Maharashtra
to study in detail the ongoing
earthquake generation processes in
the region. The on-going scientific
deep drilling investigations in the
seismically active Koyna region will
provide a unique opportunity and
the much desired data sets to better
understand the mechanisms of
faulting, physics of reservoir
triggered earthquakes and also
contribute towards earthquake
hazard assessment and develop
models for earthquake forecast in
future.
Union Minister of Science &
Technology and Earth Sciences Shri
S.Jaipal Reddy gave this information
in reply to a written question in the
Lok Sabha today.
http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=101507
