IMD sends out high-tech message

Even as it readies itself to celebrate World Meteorological Day on Wednesday, the 83-year-old Pune-based India Meteorological Department (IMD) is sending out a high-tech message.

Its weather forecasting department has installed two state-of-the-art French made three-screen Synergie workstations to help weather forecasting and has begun using high-tech image plotters extensively in their daily work.

According to IMD’s director for weather forecasting, Medha Khole, the recent high-tech acquisitions have enabled 75% of the weather forecasting work to get computerised.

The Synergie workstations manufactured by the French company, Meteo France International, helps IMD’s scientists view satellite images, numerical weather prediction (NWP) models and weather forecasting charts on the screens simultaneously, making their job quicker and more effective.

Khole said the acquisition of the Synergie workstations was part of IMD’s modernisation plan and that the workstation had been supplied to weather forecasting centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Guwahati and Nagpur.

According to Khole, satellite images were captured by a server at IMD Delhi and then sent through the Synergie system to all the forecasting centres in the country.

A visit to the IMD’s weather forecasting department on Tuesday revealed a team of meteorologists working intently on the Synergie workstations.

Highlighting the benefits of the system, assistant meteorologist Jayashree Natu told DNA that critical information relating to cloud movement, cloud top temperature, wind direction and speed, water vapour availability was available at the click of a mouse.

“We are also able to simultaneously view several different parameters all at once, making our forecasts better and faster,’’ Natu said.

In another section of the department, scientific assistant Vilas Jogdand was smiling from ear to ear, as he used the sophisticated image plotter to churn out weather forecasting charts in just five minutes.

He told DNA, “It used to take us three hours to plot the upper air charts and the sea level charts manually. Today, thanks to sophisticated computer systems, observations from across India are relayed to our computers instantly using the global telecommunications systems.’’

However, 25% of the weather forecasting department’s work — which includes the 24-hour rainfall chart, 24-hour changes in pressure and temperature, maximum and minimum temperatures and humidity — is still being documented manually. Khole was confident that these activities would also be computerised soon.