Is India Weather-Ready and Climate Smart?

As a concept “Weather-ready” means the level of readiness of any country to forecast different types of weather phenomena particularly extreme weather and to tackle such events.

An early warning system is a major element of disaster risk reduction.

To be effective, early warning systems need to actively involve the people and communities that could be at risk.

“Climate smart’, in turn, relates to the preparedness of any country to meet the growing threat of climate change in terms of availability of effectively trained meteorologists and other professionals and generation of quality climate related data for use by decision makers in charge of climate related services.

As part of the continuing efforts to improve weather forecast services, India Meteorological Department would soon introduce block level weather forecast, beginning with 115 districts that have been identified by the Central Government for special thrust as “aspirational districts”.

National Centre for Climate Change Research at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology at Pune was preparing a detailed report on various aspects of climate change. Ministry has requested NASA to send a team of experts with its specially equipped aircraft to help understand the wind profile over the oceans around India.

As part of the modernization effort, manually operated pilot balloons that are used to study the wind direction and speed were being replaced with balloons equipped with GPS across the country. The move will help get wind related data in all weather conditions. Currently, it is difficult to get the data on cloudy days and when there is fog.

In Short we are inching towards being ” Weather-Ready and Climate Smart”