News

Published: Jan 23, 2023
Updated: Jan 23, 2023

Revolutionizing Indian Agriculture and Disaster Management: Doppler Radar Network to Cover Entire India by 2025

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has announced plans to expand the Doppler Weather Radar network across the entire stretch of India by 2025, in order to improve the accuracy of predictions for extreme weather events. This expansion is expected to have a significant impact on both the agriculture industry and disaster management efforts in the country.

Expanding the Doppler Radar Network: Improving Accuracy of Extreme Weather Predictions

The IMD has augmented the Doppler Weather Radar network in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Ladakh, and Jammu & Kashmir, which will help further predict extreme weather events more accurately. The complete coverage of the country by the network is expected to be achieved by 2025.

Agriculture and Disaster Management to Benefit from Improved Weather Forecasts

The warning and advisory services provided by the IMD are helping farmers and fishermen to improve their economy as found from the latest survey by the National Centre for Applied Economic Research," said Science & Technology minister Dr. Jitendra Singh. He added that farmers below the poverty line have especially benefited as agromet advisories at district and block levels are used effectively by crores of farmers during various stages of farming and the service is being expanded.

Climate Services for Short and Long-term Planning

Dr. Singh also highlighted that climate services are very important for short and long-term planning and strategic development and IMD has already initiated these services in five major thrust areas of Agriculture, Health, Water, Energy, and Disaster Risk Reduction and has lined up plans to expand them through customization of products. Soon a National Framework will be created on priority to provide climate products and information for Sectoral applications.

IMD's Accuracy Increased by 20-40%

He underlined that IMD's accuracy has increased by about 20-40% for different severe weather events forecast during the last five years and that the weather department is making the best use of space-based observations of INSAT-3D and 3DR, OceanSat satellites for prediction of other weather events.

Flash Flood Guidance Improved

The Minister was happy to note that the recently introduced Flash Flood Guidance in 2021 has been augmented further by increasing the number of watersheds from 30,000 to 1,00,000 in the country in 2022. It is being provided every six hours to Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka apart from our national use.