UPHHEATT

The weather and climate services of India Meteorological Department aims at "Sarvajan Hitay, Sarvajan Sukhay" (welfare of all and happiness of all). To carry out this services IMD operates a value chain process. It commences with collection of Meteorological observation by the array of surface-based observational network, meteorological sensors, upper air observations through release of sensors with balloons and remotely sensed observation tools including satellite & Radar. All these observations are communicated to analysis & processing centres at state level Meteorological Centres (MCs), Regional Meteorological Centres (RMCs) and National Weather Forecasting Centre (NWFC) at IMD, New Delhi. IMD has developed indigenous Decision Support System (DSS) to compare, comprehend and analyse all the observations in real time to find out the current status of weather system and their genesis, evolution, characteristics and dissipation.

At the same time all the observational data are digitized & assimilated into array of global & regional Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models run by IMD and other organizations. The models are run at least twice daily, some four times a day with the help of High-performance computing system (HPCS). The NWP models with help of observational data attempt to solve the fundamental equations of atmosphere & ocean and simulate the current atmosphere as well as predict the future atmosphere in short to medium range up to ten days. Accordingly, the model helps in identifying the future weather systems like High & Low pressure areas, Depression, Cyclone, Western Disturbance, Monsoon circulation, Heat & Cold wave, Thunderstorm, etc. As models differ from each other, the meteorologists try to develop consensus forecast based on the various numerical weather prediction models output.

An objective of DSS in a digital platform helps not only to compare, comprehensive and analyse the forecast guidance of different models but also to compare the model guidance with real-time observations to assess the performance of each model and hence the best performing model in real-time, historically best model and to develop multi-model ensemble (MME) based consensus forecast.

The DSS also helps to convert the basic weather forecast into various sectorial applications by customising the observed and forecast products for various socio-economic sectors. IMD provides weather forecasting services to almost all socioeconomic sectors including disaster risk reduction, agriculture, power, water, health, aviation, marine, surface transport, environment, and tourism etc.

In recent years, there is significant improvement to the forecast accuracy of IMD resulting increase in the demand by the public for IMD forecast. To ensure the sustainable demand supply chain, IMD continuously enhances & upgrades its public weather services utilizing the latest tools and technology such as indigenous DSS, high resolution NWP models, Artificial Intelligence, sophisticated observational instruments and HPCS. The special emphasis has been laid in major socio-economic sectors includes urban, power & renewable energy, hydrology (water), health, environment (air quality), agriculture, transport (highways, railways, aviation, navigation and inland waterways), and tourism (UPHHEETT) representing “Welfare of All”.