All the four institutes will work on the third phase of the 'Monsoon Mission'. This mission is being spearheaded by IITM. (File) The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday approved Rs 2,135 crore for the continuation of a scheme that will further enhance and upgrade the country’s weather forecasting and climate services, along with providing latest computing capabilities and infrastructure.
The Cabinet Committee approved the continuation of Atmospheric and Climate Research-Modelling Observing Systems and Services (ACROSS). Under this scheme, eight sub-schemes will be implemented, financial support for which will be provided all through the next finance cycle, from 2021 to 2026.
The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) will implement all these sub-schemes mainly through various organisations — India Meteorological Department (IMD), Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Noida.
The continuation of the ACROSS scheme is mainly aimed at improving the country’s overall weather, climate and ocean forecast and services. For instance, in recent years, IMD has taken up upgradation and digitisation of several of its services and the results are evident in the form of near-accurate forecasts in short time range, advance prediction of cyclones and their tracks, expansion of sector-specific weather services to health, power, energy, agriculture and more areas.
During the next five years, the IMD will majorly contribute in five sub-schemes — upgradation of forecasting systems, weather and climate services, atmospheric observations network, study of monsoon and clouds, and the commissioning of polarimetric doppler weather radars in the country.
All the four institutes will work on the third phase of the ‘Monsoon Mission’. This mission is being spearheaded by IITM, which is currently pursuing the second phase of the mission. The Pune-based institute will also work on High Performance Computing system (HPC) as it has already been operating the advanced Aditya and Pratush HPCs for various weather modelling purposes.
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