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IMD upgrades tech to up forecasting accuracy

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CIOL Bureau
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NEW DELHI, INDIA: Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) on Thursday infused modernization in its weather forecasting system to meet high standards being followed in advanced nations across the globe.

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With the help of Meteo France International (MFI), IMD inaugurated its Integrated Forecasting and Communication Systems, which connects all the six metrological centers of IMD and global telecommunication through Core Information Systems Project, a common core network.

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“Earlier, most of the processes were manual and now we have automated systems. This is going to increase our efficiency. The system that we have installed will enable us to access real time data and predict weather condition more frequently,” said Dr Ajit Tyagi, director general, IMD.

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Through this new system, IMD will provide special predictions on atmospheric conditions at each Common Wealth Games venue during this mega event starting from October 3, 2010. These forecasts will be provided at regular intervals of three hours.

Under CISP, IMD has installed 15 high-end servers that are powered by Intel Xeon quad core processor with 8 GB to 16 GB RAM.

“In addition to this, we have provided 14 CIPS terminals to access data. The total Storage Area network in CIPS has capacity of 30 terabytes. This is expandable as per need. The most important part of this project was not technology but training people on new technology. We have done that and now we are providing IMD with new methods and forecasting concepts,” said Patrick Benichou, president, MFI.

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This new system can be connected to modern Doppler Weather Radars (DWRs), which are capable of giving profile of hundreds of parameters like wind, temperature, pressure, humidity and others. There are around 35 conventional radars that were being used by IMD and were only capable of tracking cloud status. These old radars will be replaced by 60 DWRs over a period of next two years.

“With DWRs coming in place we will have real time access to hundreds of factors that are taken into account for weather forecast. We used to get all the data but had very less time for dissemination of information in case of uncertainties. The new system will help us in disseminating real time information to all stakeholders in very short time,” said BP Yadav, director, Weather Forecast, IMD.

IMD under this new system has integrated all its ten cells responsible for various predictions like weather, cyclone warning, aviation cell and others under one umbrella.

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This new technology deployment has been done under project Varsamana which was started during 2008 during the tenure of Kapil Sibal, then Union Minister of Earth Sciences. The project was allocated Rs 960 crore during at that time.

However, more is required to use this new system to its optimum level. Beside the installation of DWR, IMD is waiting for Indian Space Research Organisation to speed-up the launch of long awaited satellite Megha Tropiques.

“To bring in more efficiency we are waiting for the launch of Megha-Tropiques, which will have systems like MODIS that is not available on current satellite. As of now, we are not sure of the date by when we will get access to new satellite technologies. It all depends on ISRO,” said an official present at the occasion who did not want to be named.

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