Under Mission Mausam, need-based enhanced rain, radar cover by 2026
Mission Mausam, which was approved by the union Cabinet on Wednesday, is aimed at improving India’s weather forecasting capabilities, by upgrading the weather monitoring infrastructure, investing in scientific research, and improving the skills of the scientists
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he Mission has been allocated Rs 2,000 crore for the next two years (File Photo)The newly-launched Mission Mausam will not just help in improving weather forecasts in the country but also enable the Met department to develop capabilities to ‘manage’ certain weather events, like enhancing or suppressing rainfall over an area according to requirements, a top government official said on Thursday.
“Eventually, we have to move in that direction — from just weather forecasting to weather management. For example, if incessant rains are happening in an area resulting in floods, we can try to suppress rainfall. Alternatively, if an area is not getting enough rainfall, we can try to engineer rainfall over that area,” M Ravichandran, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, said.
Engineering rains through cloud-seeding exercises has been tried out in several countries, including in India, with varying degrees of success. He hoped that the India Meteorological Department (IMD) would be able to develop reliable capabilities to ‘manage’ rainfall in the next five years.
“At a later stage, other weather events like lightning can also be managed,” he said.
Mission Mausam, which was approved by the union Cabinet on Wednesday, is aimed at improving India’s weather forecasting capabilities, by upgrading the weather monitoring infrastructure, investing in scientific research, and improving the skills of the scientists. The Mission has been allocated Rs 2,000 crore for the next two years. Ravichandran said the Mission would be implemented over a five-year period, with the budget for the second half to be decided at a later stage.
An important task under the would be intensifying the weather observation network in the country, not just over land, but also on sea and the sky. This would directly help improve the weather model accuracy and also facilitate studies paving the way for having better understanding of climate sciences, he said.
Over the next 18 months, the numbers of doppler radars, wind profilers, radiometers and radio sonde will be increased by many folds. All these are essential tools and infrastructure used for recording weather data from across the surface, atmosphere and oceans.
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