Improved Weather and Cyclone Predictions

The quality of weather services by the Ministry has shown appreciable improvements during the past three years. Specifically, noticeable improvements have been achieved in prediction skills of heavy rainfall and tropical cyclones. This is evident with reference to recent tropical cyclones, Phailin, Hudhud and Vardah and the heavy rainfall events in Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and recently in Chennai. For the recent cyclone, Vardah, which had caused severe damages in the city of Chennai and neighbourhood, accurate predictions were provided almost three days in advance, helping to save thousands of lives. The loss of lives during the last three years due to tropical cyclones has reduced to less than hundred as compared to the thousands during the previous decade. For example, the famous 1999 Super Cyclone in Orissa killed more than 10,000 people while the same intense Phailin claimed only less than 20 people in Orissa. This large reduction in casualties is attributed to substantial improvement in monitoring and prediction of tropical cyclones. The period during 2014-17 registered a decrease in track forecast error by 29, 30 and 23% as compared to 2007-13 for 24, 48 and 72 hours lead period, respectively.

The improvements in weather forecasts were accomplished by strengthening the atmospheric and oceanic observational network in the region, improving the computational capability to 1.2 petaflop speed, implementing high-resolution global models and imparting research in data assimilation and model physics. A high resolution global deterministic weather prediction model has been commissioned recently for generating operational weather forecasts at a horizontal resolution at 12 km. Many major improvements have been made in data assimilation for the ingestion of data from the Indian and international satellites in numerical models. With this new forecasting system, the accuracy of weather forecasts is expected to further improve.