India on Monday unveiled the Bharat Forecasting System (BFS), a home-grown weather forecasting system with a spatial resolution of six km which is reportedly the highest in the world. BFS would enable the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to issue more localised and accurate forecasts. The BFS can provide 6 km resolution forecasts for the tropical region that falls between 30 degrees South and 30 degrees North Latitudes. The Indian mainland extends between 8.4 degrees north and 37.6 degrees north latitudes.
The introduction of the BFS would boost the country's monsoon tracking, aviation, cyclone monitoring and disaster management, agriculture, waterways, defence, and flood forecasting. It is expected to support the actions and activities key ministries. While earlier models gave weather predictions for a 12 km grid, BFS got the capability to give inputs into weather events likely to take place in a grid of 6 km by 6 km. The data from a network of 40 Doppler Weather Radars from across the country will be used to run the BFS model that would enable the weather office to issue more localised forecasts and nowcasts. Over time, the number of radars will be taken upto to 100, which would allow the weather office to issue nowcasts weather forecasts for the next two hours across the country.
Developed by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), the Bharat Forecasting System will become operational from this monsoon season. It will be the only global numerical weather prediction system in the world deployed at such a high resolution. The numerical global forecast models run by the European, British and US weather offices have a resolution between 9 km and 14 km.
"The tropical region is a chaotic region for weather. The change in weather patterns is unpredictable and higher resolution models are required to capture the spatial changes," M Ravichandran, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences said.
"Earlier, we used to issue one forecast for four villages. The BFS will enable us to issue separate forecasts for each of the four villages," he said.
ALSO READ | Flash floods, thunderstorms, extreme weather: What India can do
The development of the forecasting model became possible thanks to the installation of the new supercomputer 'Arka' at the IITM campus in 2024. It boasts a capacity of 11.77 petaflops and a storage capacity of 33 petabytes, news agency PTI said in a report. Arka's predecessor 'Pratyush' used to take up to 10 hours to run the forecasting model while Arka can perform the task within four hours, the report said.