Lok Sabha Question No. 619 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2016-04-27
Subject: Technologies for Natural Calamities
Ministry: EARTH SCIENCES
Asked by: KAUSHALENDRA KUMAR, AJAY (TENI) MISRA, PR. SENTHILNATHAN, ALOK SANJAR, RAVNEET SINGH, P. KUMAR

## MINISTRY OF EARTH SCIENCES

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA LOK SABHA

## UNSTARRED QUESTION No. 619 TO BE ANSWERED ON WEDNESDAY, April 27, 2016

## TECHNOLOGIES FOR NATURAL CALAMITIES

## 619.   SHRI KAUSHALENDRA KUMAR:

SHRI AJAY MISRA TENI:

SHRI PR. SENTHIL NATHAN:

SHRI ALOK SANJAR:

SHRI RAVNEET SINGH:

SHRI P. KUMAR:

Will the Minister of EARTH SCIENCES be pleased to state:

- (a) the details of technologies available to forecast natural calamities such as earthquakes, tsunami, cyclone, drought, flood, hailstorm, abnormal weather,  unseasonal  rains  etc.  and  also  to  provide  the  information  to general public and farmers in this regard;
- (b) the details of benefits accrued by general public and farmers by the said technologies;
- (c) the  comparison  between  the  technology  used  by  the  country  viz-a-viz global standards for the same;
- (d) whether the Government proposes to use more advanced technology for the above purpose and if so, the details thereof; and
- (e) the  other  steps  taken/being  taken  by  the  Government  to  tackle  natural calamities?

## ANSWER

MINISTER OF STATE FOR MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AND MINISTRY OF EARTH SCIENCES (SHRI Y. S. CHOWDARY)

- (a) India  Meteorological  Department  (IMD)  is  responsible  for  monitoring, detection  and  forecasting  of  weather  including  severe  weather  events

such  as  cyclones,  heavy  rainfall,  extreme  temperature  etc.  It  provides forecast of these events at national, regional and state levels through its three tier structure.

In order to provide early warning of severe weather events, IMD has setup a network of state meteorological centres to have better coordination with a state and other agencies.

Improvement  of  weather  forecasting  services  is  a  continuous  process. Over  the  last  few  years,  Government  has  initiated  a  comprehensive modernization  programme  for  IMD  covering  upgradation  of  (i)  upgraded observation  systems  (ii)  advanced  data  assimilation  tools  (iii)  advanced communication  and  IT  infrastructure  (iv)  high  performance  computing systems  and  (v)  intensive/sophisticated  training  of  IMD  personnel  to facilitate  the  implementation  of  advanced  global/regional/  meso-scale prediction models for improving the accuracy of weather forecasts in all temporal  and  spatial  scales  and  for  quick  dissemination  of  weather forecast assessments/warnings to the users.

Operational implementation of improved forecast suite of models after the commissioning  of  the  High  Performance  Computing  (HPC)  systems  have enhanced  the  weather  forecasting  capacities  through  assimilating  all available  global  satellite  radiance  data  for  the  production  of  forecast products at 22Km grid globally and 9Kms/3Kms grid over India/regional/mega city domains.

IMD has operationalized its location specific nowcasting weather service across  the  country.  This  service  activity  currently  covers  156  urban centres  on  experimental  basis  under  which  nowcast  of  severe  weather (Thunderstorms; heavy rainfall from lows/depressions over the land) in 36hrs.  range  is  issued.  Origin,  development/movement  of  severe  weather phenomena  are  regularly  monitored  through  Doppler  Weather  Radars (DWRs) and with all available other observing systems (Automatic Weather Station-AWSs; Automatic Rain Gauge -ARGs; Automatic Weather Observing  Systems-AWOS;  satellite  derived  wind  vectors,  temperature, moisture fields etc.)

Recently, under the National Monsoon Mission initiative, other institutions of  the  Ministry,  the  Indian  Institute  of  Tropical  Meteorology  (IITM),  Pune, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad  and  National  Centre  for  Medium  Range  Weather  Forecasting (NCMRWF), NOIDA have embarked upon to build a state-of-the-art coupled oceanatmospheric  climate  model  for  a)  improved  prediction  of  monsoon rainfall on extended range to seasonal time scale (16 days to one season) and b) improved prediction of temperature, rainfall and extreme weather events  on  short  to  medium  range  time  scale  (up  to  15  days)  so  that forecast skill gets quantitatively improved further for operational services of IMD.

National Center for Seismology (NCS) is monitoring earthquake activity in and around the county round the clock through its national seismological network. There is no proven scientific technique worldwide exists so far to predict/forecast the occurrence of earthquakes with reasonable degree of accuracy in space, time and magnitude.

Observing  systems  support  for  the  Indian  Tsunami  Early  Warning  Centre (ITEWC) comprises of real-time seismic monitoring network of 17 broadband  seismic  stations  apart  from  other  national  and  international seismic stations to detect under-sea tsunamigenic earthquakes from the two  known  subduction  zones  of  Andaman-Sumatra  and  Makran  in  Indian Ocean which can potentially affect entire Indian coastal states and Island regions,  a  network  of  real-time  sea-level  sensors  with  Bottom  Pressure Recorders  (BPR)  in  the  open  ocean,  HF  Radars  for  coastal  currents  and coastal tide gauge stations to capture tsunami wave speed and amplitude on 24 X 7 basis.

- (b) The Government has been entrusting the task of carrying out a comprehensive  third  party  assessment  of  socio-economic  benefits  of  its services  to  the  reputed  National  Council  of  Applied  Economic  Research (NCEAR), Delhi. As per the recent NCAER report, farming community of the country is using the Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS) service products of IMD for critical farm operations viz. i) Management of sowing (Delayed onset  of  rains);  ii)  Changing  crop  variety  (Delay  in  rainfall);  iii)  Spraying Pesticides for disease  control (occurrence  of rainfall);  iv)  Managing Irrigation (Heavy rainfall Forecast).

Concurrently, with the implementation of District Level AgroMeteorological  Advisory  services,  India  has  seen  improved  agriculture performance in the rain fed farming (covers 60%  of arable land). Incremental  profit  due  to  GKMS  is  assessed  at  25%  of  the  net  income. Potential Annual Economic profit by using GKMS by 24% of the community cultivating 4-principle crops (wheat; paddy; sugarcane; cotton) in 2010 was assessed at Rs. 38,463 Crores (when 2.0 million farmers were subscribed to SMS service), the annual profit rose to Rs.42,000 Crores in 2015 (11.5 million  farmers  have  been  subscribed  to  SMS  service),  Top11-  Principal Crops  was  assessed  as  56,310  Crores  and  top  28-  Principal  Crops  was assessed as Rs. 67,000 Crores in 2015. The study suggests that GKMS has the potential of generating net economic benefit up to Rs.3.3 lakh crores on the 4-principal crops alone when Agro-Meteorological advisory is fully utilized by 90.3 million dependent households.

- (c-e)   The technology used by the country is of international standard. Government also feels that the up gradation of the observing system, high performance computing, communication, forecast/warning systems, product  dissemination  systems  etc.  should  become  a  part  of  continuing process  by  which  state-of-the  art  science  and  technology  tools  shall  be made  accessible  to  the  scientists  engaged  in  weather  research  and forecasting towards enhancing the service quality.

*****