India has spent Rs 1.79 crore on the deputation of 19 scientists from various institutes to foreign institutions under the National Monsoon Mission programme over the last three years. “A major benefit of these visits is the development of strong scientific ad technical capability in India in the areas of atmosphere-ocean coupled modeling which is essential for advancing the skill of forecasting weather and climate,'' said Minister of State for Earth Sciences Y.S.Chowdhry in response to a question in Lok Sabha.
The country has, over the past few years, been aggressively developing systems under the monsoon mission and other programmes to improve forecasting and information dissemination services to stakeholders. Among the projects being developed is the extended range prediction system, which will even predicts breaks in the summer monsoon.
Scientists at the Indian Institute for Tropical Metereology, Pune are working on climate change prediction models. There is also work on in the assimilation of Indian satellite data in the data assimilation system. The Met Department is stressing on using radar data for studying small scale processes in the Indian monsoon system for high resolution model forecasts as well as for flood forecasting.
