PUNE: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) will now issue three-hourly thunderstorm nowcast for around 433 stations. IMD is also issuing district-level nowcasts for thunderstorm occurrence and related severe weather for all districts of India through Whatsapp, SMS, e-mail and IMD website.
Nowcasting is weather forecasting on short-term mesoscale period of up to 2 hours according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
This decision was taken by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) after the devastation caused by the severe thunderstorms during March-April-May 2018, over different parts of India and particularly the northern and northwestern region.
Under the chairmanship of Secretary, MoES, a meeting was held on June 1, 2018 and subsequently a working group was formed to develop the tools for predicting thunderstorm occurrence, as well as lightning flash, lightning probability, heavy rain, gusty wind, etc, up to a 24-hour lead time and outlook for 48-hour lead time. Under this new initiative, for improving detection of thunderstorms location and associated lightning, high-resolution satellite observations, lightning sensor observations and radar observations have been merged to develop user-friendly high spatiotemporal operational products.
Scientists from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), IMD and National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) coordinated and developed holistic thunderstorm specific products for nowcast i.e. forecast prior to 3 hours in advance, short-range forecast up to 24 hours from high resolution mesoscale model and 48-hour outlook from high resolution global model.
Speaking to Sakal Times, Anupam Kashyapi, head of weather at IMD Pune, said, “Based on Model Forecast, the status of clouds will be studied and the wind movement, which is also crucial in a thunderstorm. All of these factors will be used along with model forecast, which will be given to predict where the thunderstorm occurs and at what time.”
As per an official statement, these new prediction tools have been utilised since April 1 this year for thunderstorm forecast guidance.
