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The Secretary, Department of Science & Technology, Prof. V.S Ramamurthy has stressed the need for promoting and strengthening research in the Universities in the country teaching atmospheric sciences. Inaugurating the two-day International Brainstorming Meeting on Modeling and Prediction over Indian Monsoon Region: Vision 2015 in Noida today, he said that the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) should try to promote the formation of a consortium of Indian Universities working on atmospheric sciences with their center functioning as a nodal agency, as in the United States. He expressed happiness that a regional cooperative research center for the BIMSTEC countries has been recently launched in NCMRWF and said that this should serve as an umbrella organisation for the NCMRWF to extend their cooperation with the neighbouring countries who are also influenced by the vagaries of the monsoon.
Prof. Ramamurthy said that we are living in an era of globalisation and the international community is working towards a seamless prediction of the Earth System in totality. He called upon NCMRWF, a premier numerical modeling center of the country, to become a vital partner in this endeavour and tap the opportunities provided by this cooperation to enhance their capabilities in adopting and developing improved and high resolution models and data assimilation through new space and ocean observing system.
Prof. Ramamurthy said the weather and climate of India is dominated by the phenomena of monsoon and its economic importance is enormous, especially on food production and the economic performance in GDP terms as well.
Speaking on the occasion the President of Institute of Global Environment and Society of the United States, Prof. Jagdish Shukla said that India must encourage participation of the private sector in weather forecasting. He also called for better assimilation of data received through satellites and ocean surfaces. Prof. Shukla called for the adoption of a uniform single model system which should be adopted by various participating institutions in weather forecasting.
Others who spoke on the occasion included Dr. A.K Bohra, Head of NCMRWF and Dr. L.S Rathore, Chairman of the organizing committee .
The two-day conference is taking place under the shadow of failure of two monsoons over the region in just three years out of which the failure of monsoon in 2002 was really disastrous and the whole country reeled under the impact of severe drought. Nearly 200 scientists from home and abroad are attending the conference which will bring out a vision document to accelerate improvement in numerical weather prediction over Indian Monsoon Region.
Prof. Ramamurthy launched district level weather forecast by NCMRWF on the occasion. This will help the farming community to a great extent. NCMRWF will provide the weather forecast for all 604 districts on a daily basis on its web page and this will be updated on a regular basis. The forecast will include quantity of precipitation, trends of maximum and minimum temperature and weekly cumulative rainfall. These forecasts will be on a five day basis and will be produced without any human intervention and hence may lack the benefit of personal experience of the forecasters who consider aspects relating to synoptic situations and modulations due to local topography. The forecast can be accessed by any user free of cost. The forecast is in experimental mode and need more validation and verification. As many of the districts do not have meteorological observatories, foolproof data will be difficult to get; nonetheless feedback from user community will help in further improving the skill. It is expected that the forecasts will be of good use to farmers, reservoir managers, power generators/distributors, avalanche forecasters and flood forecasters.
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