Monsoon Mission and Improved Monsoon Predictions

Accurate prediction of monsoon rainfall is very crucial as it impacts many sectors like agriculture, water resources, power generation, transport and even the Indian economy. The Monsoon Mission was launched in 2012 with an allocation of 400 crore to develop the capability of dynamical model prediction systems for short range to seasonal forecasts during the Monsoon season and to improve the monsoon forecasts. Under the Monsoon Mission, MoES has implemented two state-of-the-art dynamical prediction systems for short range to medium, extended range and seasonal forecasts. Many major improvements have been made in data assimilation for the ingestion of data from the Indian and International satellites and Indian Doppler weather radars in numerical models. All these initiatives have helped to improve the skill of monsoon forecasts over the country. For the first time, India Meteorological Department used the Monsoon Mission dynamical model to prepare operational seasonal forecast of 2017 monsoon rainfall over India.

With these facilities, the Ministry is now capable of generating monsoon forecasts on all time scales, short range to seasonal. The experimental extended range forecasts (up to 20 days), initiated by the Ministry in 2014 were found quite useful for the farming sector in deciding agricultural operations and water reservoir management. This will be further extended for disaster management.