Weather check: Mumbai to get two more Doppler radars

MUMBAI: In the coming years, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) will be able to provide more accurate weather information as it has decided to instal four more Doppler weather radars in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Two of the radars will come up in Mumbai, and one each in Thane and Navi Mumbai. Officials said that two of these four radars will come up by 2020.

At present, the IMD has a Doppler weather radar atop a building in Colaba's Navy Nagar area and another is coming in Jogeshwari. Global tenders have been floated for installation of the Doppler radar in Veravali, Jogeshwari.
Doppler radars and synergy systems made an entry into the weather bureau following 26 July 2005, when the city received 944mm of unannounced rainfall that led to a deluge. Weathermen said that for a city like Mumbai, it is not enough to rely on only one radar. "We do not want to take any chances. If we are going to witness any severe weather conditions, we do not want to miss the signals. We have to complement the Colaba and Jogeshwari radars with few others ," said K S Hosalikar, deputy director general of meteorology at the regional IMD.
The radars use Doppler effect to produce data by sending out beams through its antenna. "At Colaba, we have an S band radar which can track weather till 500kmradius. It's antenna size is big and it has huge transmission power. This radar can get perfect data if its going to rain heavily or if a cyclone is around. The four new radars will have X band, which is more or less similar to the Colaba one. The X band radars can better detect convective clouds and also cumulonimbus clouds, which brought rains in July 2005," he said.