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Visakhapatnam: Technology and artificial intelligence under Mission Mausam have brought in improvisation that is enabling early and accurate forecasts of weather, which has reduced human loss and helped farmers deal with excess rain or drought.India Meteorological Department (IMD) Director General (DG) Mrutyunjay Mohapatra they are planning to strengthen the network of meteorological observation stations and further improve IMD’s forecast accuracy by 15 per cent by 2030. Mohapatra disclosed that the weather agency has entered into collaborations with various academic and R&D institutes in India and abroad. It is enhancing its capability to provide precise weather forecasts by utilising both physical and artificial intelligence (AI) models in the coming days. A good number of automated meteorological observational networks will be installed at district and block levels in the coming years, giving the Met agency localised data with a higher resolution, which will help improve the forecast accuracy. Doppler radars will be increased from 40 to 73 by 2025–26 and further to 126 by 2026. Automatic rain gauges will go up by 1,000 and weather stations by 500, enhancing real-time data capture.“IMD’s forecasting has improved between 2019 and 2023. Its cyclone tracking accuracy matches or surpasses the systems of the USA and Japan,’’ Mohapatra told this correspondent.He maintained that climate change has been causing disasters in the world with varied temperatures, erratic rainfall and drop in temperatures. Calling it anthrosphere – environment modified by human beings, he pointed out that coal mining, industrialisation and automotives have impacted the climate.With regard to Andhra Pradesh, Mohapatra announced that the state will soon have three more Doppler Weather Radars that would improvise the weather forecasting system. AP already has such radars at Visakhapatnam, Machilipatnam and Sriharikota. The new radars will be installed in Ongole, Amaravati and Kakinada.IMD, Amaravati, Director Stella S. said, “Bidding has been completed for the three new radars as well as for the non-functional radar at Machilipatnam. We have requested the state government to allot land for installation of these systems.”IMD sources said automatic weather stations will be increased in Andhra Pradesh from the current 62 to 80. One is coming up in ASR district, which records the state's lowest temperatures.
