Weather forecast in your phone, by July

TT, 03 Jan 2019, New Delhi: India's national weather agency hopes to deliver by July this year selected forecasts directly into mobile phones through apps now under development, a top official in the Union earth sciences ministry said.

The India Meteorological Department is currently developing three mobile apps for general local forecasts, agrometeorological forecasts, and disaster-related warnings, said Madhavan Rajeevan, secretary in the earth sciences ministry.

"These apps will enable mobile phone subscribers to track forecasts on their own devices," Rajeevan said.

The apps are part of broader efforts by the IMD to improve the speed, accuracy and dissemination of its forecasts through a mix of software, weather tracking radars and social media platforms.

The IMD is testing at six sites, including Chandigarh, Chennai and Visakhapatnam, a special visualisation software adapted from the Turkey Meteorological Service that combines multiple weather datasets to help forecasts make faster and more reliable decisions, Rajeevan said.

This Metcap Plus software will help improve the speed and reliability of a range of forecasts -- from nowcasts, issued three hours in advance, to medium range forecasts issued up to five days in advance.

The earth sciences ministry has told a parliamentary panel that it also plans to add Doppler weather radars to "plug existing gaps" in the country's weather observations network. These radars are tools to improve forecasts of thunderstorms and other extreme weather events.

Although the IMD currently disseminates nowcast warnings, including advisories about severe weather events, through text messages to designated officials in over 300 towns across the country, the alerts do not always reach the public in time.

The parliamentary standing committee on science and technology, in a report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, said that despite claims about advance forecasts from the earth sciences ministry, the "end beneficiary of the system has not been benefited to the desired extent".

The National Disaster Management Authority had proposed the development of a technology platform called common alerting protocol to relay emergency warnings about impending severe weather events, especially thunderstorms and cycleones, directly into mobile phones.

Senior officials familiar with the proposal say the platform will initially relay forecasts from the IMD but could also relay flood forecasts from the Central Water Commission and state-ofthe-sea forecasts from the Indian Centre for Ocean and Information Services, Hyderabad..