Responding to the Kerala government’s decision to source weather inputs from private agencies during the southwest monsoon, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said it is unable to deploy new automated weather stations (AWS) before June due to the COVID-19 lockdown and because some of the sites do not meet standards.
IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, in a letter to V. Venu, Principal Secretary, Revenue and Disaster Management, said IMD had been providing the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) with “very high-resolution Numerical Weather Prediction Model forecasts” since 2017 and assured the “best weather services” to the people of Kerala.
The letter came in response to a May 15 State government order that termed IMD inputs inadequate and allowed the State Emergency Operations Centre to also access weather inputs from Skymet Weather Services, Windy, the IBM Weather Company, and Earth Networks.
The IMD DG did not make any direct comments regarding the State’s decision to seek inputs from private agencies. However, Mr. Mohapatra said following a Kerala government request after the 2018 floods, IMD decided to establish 100 AWS across Kerala. The first 15 were to be ready before the 2020 southwest monsoon, and the remaining 85 by the end of 2020.
Accordingly, IMD issued a supply order for the first 15 AWS to M/s Hach DHR India Pvt Ltd. They were ready for installation by the middle of March 2020. “However, the work could not be completed due to delay in the finalisation of sites (out of 15, only 13 sites could be finalised by March 17), as some of the sites initially proposed did not satisfy the standard exposure conditions,” Mr. Mohapatra said. This matter had been conveyed to the KSDMA, he said.
IMD also asked the supplier to complete the installation of the 15 AWS within a month of the lockdown’s lifting. The remaining 85 would be installed by the end of the year as planned, Mr. Mohapatra said.
Since 2017, IMD had been supplying KSDMA with very high-resolution Numerical Weather Prediction Model forecasts from its Global Forecasting System (GFS), Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF), and Global Ensemble Forecasting System (GEFS) models, he said. “These forecasts can be further downscaled and used to generate forecasts at any spatial scale like taluk, district, river basin, State-level etc.,” Mr. Mohapatra said in his letter.
Since May 1 this year, IMD also furnished rainfall forecasts at 12.5-km resolution to the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment (KSCSTE) to support its basin-wise emergency system for alert during flood events (BE-SAFE) for the Periyar, he added.
More weather radars planned
Mr. Mohapatra refuted the charge that the IMD failed to deploy more doppler weather radars (DWR) in Kerala. Two existing DWRs, in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi, met the requirements of central and south Kerala, he said. The IMD was giving top priority to installing an x-band radar at Kannur airport. Two more radars would be installed, at Mangalore and Kavaratti, during the next two years.