New Delhi: India will have at least 25 more doppler radars in the next 2-3 years and the entire country will be covered by doppler radars by 2025, said union minister Jitendra Singh. He also said that the Met department’s severe weather prediction accuracy improved by around 40 per cent in the last eight to nine years.
He said the number of doppler radars in the county has increased from 15 in 2013 to 37 in 2023. India will add 25 more radars in the next two to three years, taking the number to 62, he added.
“The entire country will be covered by doppler radars by 2025,” he said.
Jitendra Singh made the remarks while he was addressing the 148th foundation day of the India Meteorological Department (IMD). With the improvement in forecast, the minister said, disaster-related mortality has dropped to a single digit.
The IMD on Sunday commissioned four doppler weather radars (DWRs) in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jammu and Kashmir. The four DWRs have been installed at Banihal Top in Jammu and Kashmir, Jot and Murari Devi in Himachal Pradesh and Surkanada Devi in Uttarakhand. They will help bolster its weather monitoring capabilities in the western Himalayan region.
It may be mentioned here that Doppler radar is a specialised tracking system that tracks weather conditions and calculates information about the location and velocity of a storm or other forms of extreme weather events by using the Doppler effect.
It is used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type. Forecasting with the help of doppler radar is more timely. Such forecasts can be critical during safe evacuations in the likelihood of extreme weather events.