New Delhi: Weather forecasts from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) are set to improve with the commissioning of two new weather prediction systems.

Their defining feature is a resolution of 12 km, almost twice as better as the previous system that had a grid-level resolution of 23 km. In addition, they will be based on a 20-point ensemble system that, as its name suggests, will generate a range of forecasts using slightly varying initial conditions instead of making just one prediction about the future state of the weather.

“The aim is to generate a probabilistic type of forecasts for different intensities of rainfalls and other parameters for smaller areas, of the size of about one administrative block,” Madhavan Rajeevan, secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said while commissioning the new systems.

They will operate in a coupled mode and are expected to enhance weather information being provided by the current models by quantifying the uncertainties in weather forecasts and generating probabilistic forecasts. They have been put together by scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, the National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, Noida, and IMD.

Beyond assisting sectors like agriculture, tourism and renewable energy, the systems are expected to be of particular help for disaster management authorities and other such stakeholders in mounting better emergency responses by explicitly accounting for uncertainties in weather forecasts.

The forecast products from the two systems will be available here and here for 10 days at a time.

According to Rajeevan, it was possible to build the new systems thanks to a recent upgrade of weather-modelling computing capacity to eight petaflops at a cost of Rs 450 crore. “The frameworks of the new systems are among the best weather prediction systems in the world at present. Very few forecasting centres in the world use [such a] high resolution for short-medium range probabilistic weather forecasts,” he added.

The Ministry of Earth Sciences has set up a special committee to help IMD make focused efforts at improving its capacity to forecast thunderstorms, which have been on the rise of late. The ministry has also been working to implement more effective mechanisms for disseminating weather information and climate forecasts to stakeholders using various communication channels. The point, per Rajeevan, is to “transform India into a ‘weather ready’ country.”

Sunderarajan Padmanabhan writes for India Science Wire and tweets at @ndpsr.