IMD turning 147, to celebrate achievements in weather forecast accuracy, climate services

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India Meteorological Department.(photo:twitter)

New Delhi, (Asian independent) India Meteorological Department (IMD) will celebrate its recent achievements like improvement in weather forecast accuracy and enhancement in climate services among others as it marks its 147th foundation day on Friday.

“With a humble beginning in 1875, the IMD has marched forward with various milestones and paradigms to serve the society,” it said in a statement on Thursday.

“IMD is celebrating 147th Foundation Day on 14th January 2022 and the function will be organised virtually at Mahika Hall, Ministry of Earth Sciences,” it added.

Other than improvement in the weather forecast accuracy, there has been enhancement in climate services, weather forecasting services, Numerical Weather Prediction modelling and meteorological observations.

The IMD sais that 33 Doppler Weather Radars are operational across the country with four being commissioned in January 2022 at New Delhi, Leh, Mumbai, and Chennai.

“A very high resolution city scale air quality model ‘ENvironmental information FUsion SERvice (ENFUSER)’ has been operationalised for Delhi. Hourly air quality forecast for 72 hours of all criteria pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, O3, CO, NO2, SO2) is generated for the domain at 30 metre spatial resolution.

“Impact Based multi-hazard Forecast (IBF) and risk-based warnings valid for next five days extended to whole country for all types of severe weather at city, district and meteorological sub-division levels,” it added.

“Dynamical web-based decision support system for impact-based forecast of cyclones has been developed by the NDMA in collaboration with the IMD and the system is installed in the IMD,” the IMD said.

On automation of generation of cyclone warning bulletins for aviation, ports etc, it said: “Besides, automatic generation and display of coastal weather observations, coastal weather forecast for the next five days, coastal weather bulletin and location-specific coastal forecast for 325 locations and nowcast for 138 stations.”

Under climate service, a multi-model ensemble forecast scheme for monthly/seasonal rainfall and temperature commencing from April 2021 along has been introduced that will give a probabilistic prediction of the spatial distribution of rainfall and temperature. A climate monitoring and prediction services for south Asia based on above scheme has also been enhanced.

Under weather forecast accuracy, Probability of Detection (POD) for heavy rainfall warning with 24 hour lead period is 74 per cent in 2021, which has improved by 51 per cent in year 2021 as compared to their skill between 2002-20. False Alarm Rate (FAR) and Missing Rate (MR) are 26 per cent in 2021, which has improved by 21 per cent and 53 per cent, respectively, in 2021 as compared to their skill between 2002-20, the IMD added.