India to be covered by Doppler Weather Radar Network by 2025

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Vibha Sharma

Chandigarh, January 16

The entire country will be covered by Doppler Weather Radar Network by 2025 to help predict extreme weather events more accurately, union minister Jitendra Singh said on Sunday, speaking at the foundation day of India Meteorological Department.

Four new radars were added on Sunday taking the number from 33 to 37.

They include two at Murari Devi and Jot in Himachal Pradesh, and one each at Banihal Top in Jammu and Kashmir and Surkandaji in Uttarakhand covering a radius of 100 km.

The IMD has taken proactive steps to increase the number of radars from 15 in 2013 to 37 in 2023 and will add 25 more in next 2-3 years, he said in presence of Chief Ministers of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand and LG of J&K—the three Himalayan States most prone to the extreme events in the country.

While two more radars mean that 70 per cent of Himachal will be covered, there is need for more, including one at Lahaul-Spiti–which is also of strategic importance due to proximity to the China Border touching J&K and Ladakh.

Himachal Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh urged the union minister to provide one more DWR system at Lahaul-Spiti, which suffers from frequent cloud-burst incidents.

Doppler radar

The specialised radar uses Doppler’ effect to produce velocity data about an object at a distance by bouncing a microwave signal off a desired target and analysing how its motion has altered the frequency of the returned signal.

The variation gives direct and highly accurate measurements of the radial component of the target’s velocity relative to the radar.

Why Doppler radars?

Increasing incidents of flash floods and cloudbursts in the hill states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country due to climate change has led to increasing need for accurate forecasting for such events.

Accurate predictions are needed to save lives and forecast of weather, including monsoon and cyclones given the fact that India’s GDP is largely dependent on agriculture, short and long term planning and strategy development.

With a rise in the frequency of extreme weather events, nowcasts or providing advance warning around three to six hours prior to the event using technology, advanced models, observations and relevant computing are needed.

Though the minister said that India’s weather prediction accuracy increased by 20-40% for different severe weather events forecast during the past five years, the July-8 2022 flash floods near the holy cave shrine of Amarnath again raised doubts over the capability to accurately forecast.

Extreme events and radars

This was not the first time that India’s hilly terrains witnessed such extreme weather phenomena.

The cloudburst and flash floods that ravaged the Kedarnath region from June 13-17 in 2013 left more than 6,000 dead.

Environmentalists have linked these natural events of varying intensity to climate change, besides unplanned development and disregard for environmental laws in ecologically-fragile areas.

Meteorologists say the nature of events, besides the tropical nature of our country, makes it difficult to predict well in time. At the same time, however, they also point inadequate number of radars, especially in the hills

At the time of the event, the IMD had an automatic weather station near the Amarnath shrine to provide forecasts during the pilgrimage. Surrounding mountainous areas, however, did not have any such station

Meteorologists say more radars with a smaller range of 50 km to give two to three hours of warning are needed in the hilly regions. For example “J&K, Himachal and Uttarakhand need at least 10 radars each to read the intensity and magnitude of a storm brewing in hilly terrain”.

If the density of radars improves, nowcasts can be improved. The Yatra routes, especially, should be equipped with adequate weather forecasting radars.

Currently, there are around 37 radars located at various places across the country.

IMD chief Mrutyunjay Mohapatra IMD said more radars will be installed across the country, including the northeast, in the next five years.