Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) Director General (DG) Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, on Tuesday (August 6, 2024), admitted that there were ‘gap areas’ in the detection and prediction of severe weather events such as flash floods, cloudbursts and lightening due to lack of finer resolutions from satellite data.
“Our motto is no weather hazard should go undetected and we have practically reduced the deaths due to cyclones to zero. But, there are challenges like cloudbursts and landslides like in Kerala recently. These could not be detected due to limitations in the satellite resolutions and quality of data,” he maintained.
Dr. Mohapatra gave a presentation at an event organised by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad on Tuesday (August 6, 2024) as part of the ‘National Science Day’ to commemorate the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the dark side of the moon.
“About 2,500 people lost their lives due to lightening last year. This, along with cloudbursts predictions need improvement to prevent deaths. Due to usage of space technology, there has been drastic reduction in loss of lives through meteorological observations and quantum jump in economy from the 60s.,” he said.
Only 5 percent of data from observations utilised
The IMD DG pointed out that 90 per cent of the weather forecasting is based on satellite data, but only ‘5 per cent’ of the data from the observations is being utilised currently. He called upon researchers, academicians and the industry to come up with innovative solutions by ‘maximising the data’.
The DG called for a “constellation of satellite scatterometers for detection and prediction of intensity of cyclonic disturbances and monsoon systems over the ocean region. Vertical resolution profiles of wind, temperature and humidity and a constellation of cloud and precipitation radars is required to precisely detect weather events - which are still going undetected by the existing satellites”.
Better imaging to be available after launch of next generation satellites
JV Thomas, director, Earth Observations and Disaster Management Services of ISRO said that better imaging round the clock and fine satellite data resolutions of both atmosphere and ocean can be obtained once the next generation of satellites like ResourceSat, CartoSat, OceanSat and INSAT 3D, RISAT-1B Oceansat 3A, NISSAR and others are launched in the coming months.
The agency was also working on an advanced imager, lightening imager and hyperspectral infrared sounder, scatterometer, altimeter, microwave radiometers, wind profile, atmosphere chemistry, temperature and humidity profiles as per the requirements of various departments. INCOIS Group Director T.M. Balakrishnan Nair, National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR) director M.V. Ramana Murthy and others also spoke.
