Private forecasters no match for us, says India’s Met chief

In August last year, KJ Ramesh took charge as the Director-General of India Meteorological Department (IMD), the country’s nati-onal meteorological service. Ramesh is heading IMD at a time when it is in the middle of expanding their observatory network and has plans to improve its technological prowess for more accurate forecasts. Ramesh spoke to DNA on issues ranging from IMD’s expansion plans, forecasting systems and coping with private forecasters. Excerpts:

IMD is in the middle of operational and infrastructure expansion. Can you dwell on the targets for adding physical infrastructure?

It is happening in two directions. Consolidating the existing observatory systems and augmenting them as per emerging needs and expanding them to go to the next level. The Indian Air Force will be adding 12 radars while IMD will be adding 11 radars to augment the radar network. We are commissioning it in such a way that each district has one automatic weather station (AWS) and two automatic rain gauges. That is the sort of network we have established. After that, for the next three years, we will have two to five AWS’ and then about 15 rain gauges. In cities, we will densify the network for capturing heavy rainfall …read more