Lok Sabha Question No. 3629 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2016-12-07
Subject: Centralised Control by IMD
Ministry: EARTH SCIENCES
Asked by: A. ARUNMOZHITHEVAN, K. GOPAL

## MINISTRY OF EARTH SCIENCES

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA LOK SABHA

## UNSTARRED QUESTION No. 3629

## TO BE ANSWERED ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 07, 2016

## CENTRALISED CONTROL BY IMD

## 3629. SHRI A. ARUNMOZHITHEVAN: DR. K. GOPAL:

Will the Minister of EARTH SCIENCES be pleased to state:

- (a) the details of methods used by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for weather and monsoon forecast;
- (b) whether IMD proposes to acquire more centralised control with its regional centres across the country and if so, the details thereof;
- (c) whether IMD requires data storage in order of 5 petabytes and if so, the details thereof;
- (d) whether the Government proposes to invest crores of rupees for supercomputer facility; and
- (e) if so, the details thereof and its likely benefits along with progress made so far in this regard?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AND MINISTRY OF EARTH SCIENCES

(Shri Y. S. Chowdary)

- (a) IMD  currently  employs  dynamical  and  statistical  models  for  generating various spatial and temporal (up to 6-h very short range; up to 72h short range; up to 240h medium range; up to 15-days extended range; monthly and  seasonal  scale)  forecasts  for  operating  various  warning  services  to different  sectors  of  economy.      Operational  implementation  of  improved suite  of  dynamical  prediction  models  with  assimilation  of  all  available global  satellite  radiance  data  has  enhanced  the  weather  forecasting capability for the production of forecast products at 22km grid globally and 9km/3km grid over India/regional/mega city domains.

Under  Ministry of  Earth  Sciences-National  Oceanic  and  Atmospheric Administration, USA (MoES-NOAA) collaboration, the improved framework of forecast models were adapted and after due performance evaluation and associated fine tuning of the modeling frameworks, an ocean-atmospheric coupled  Climate  Forecast  System  (CFS)  was  implemented  for  extended range, monthly and seasonal scale forecasts.

The  present  long  range  forecast  system  based  on  the  statistical  models has always been demonstrating useful skill in predicting all India seasonal rainfall  including  the  deficient  monsoon  season  rainfall  during  2015. However,  in  order  to  overcome  the  limitations  of  the  statistical  models used so far, dynamical coupled ocean-atmospheric model framework has been implemented. Subsequent to the exhaustive performance evaluation of  the  CFS  system,  IMD  is  venturing  to  operate  extended,  monthly  and seasonal forecast services to build climate services.

- (b) No Madam.
- (c) No Madam.

(d-e)   During the XIIth plan, the High Performance Computing (HPC) systems have been  up-scaled  to  1.2  petaflops  so  far  to  support  the  ongoing  efforts  on modelling.  Owing  to  the  above,  operational  implementation  of  improved suite of prediction models and global ocean data assimilation system with the  ingestion  of  INSAT-3D  17-channel  radiance  data;    global  ensemble prediction system for probability of severe weather etc have enhanced the weather  forecasting  capability.    In  addition,  experimental  runs  for  12Km global  forecast  model  are  also  being  carried  out  so  as  to  generate  subdistrict scale forecasts utilizing the available HPC facilities.

In  order  to  meet  the  target  set  by  the  Government  to  render  block  level forecast service for agricultural operations by March 2019, efforts are on to scale  up  the  HPC  support  to  10  petaflops  for  implementing  the    12km ensemble prediction system, that is under testing currently. Also, additional HPC  support is required for assimilating  INSAT-3DR and SCATSAT data from recently launched satellites by India.

*****