Indian Meteorological Department (IMD)

Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) is an agency of Ministry of Earth Science (MoES) which is responsible for issuing weather forecasting for the country, meteorological observations and seismology.  It is responsible for issuing warning for adverse weather conditions such as heat and cold waves, rainfall, cyclones and natural disasters such as Tsunami and earthquakes. Indian Meteorological Department is also responsible for forecasting weather conditions and issue warnings for public if required. IMD also names tropical cyclones which originate in the Northern Indian ocean. Indian Meteorological Department in collaboration with ISRO, uses INSAT and IR series satellite data to analyse and predict the forecasting of weather conditions. IMD also uses High Performance Computing (HPC) facility - Pratyush and Mihir, for weather forecasting and climate changes.    

Indian Meteorological Department (IMD)

1) Calcutta was hit by a disastrous cyclone in 1864 followed by failure of two monsoon seasons continuously in 1866 and 1874. So Government of India established Indian Meteorological Department in 1875. 

2) IMD produced its first monsoon forecast in 1886 after the famine of the 1870s. 

3) Indian Meteorological Department is an agency of Ministry of Earth Science.

4) The headquarter of IMD has been shifted several times. Firstly it was Calcutta, then shifted to Pune followed by Shimla and finally to New Delhi.

So presently, Indian Meteorological Department has headquarter in Delhi

3) The principal responsibilities of Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) includes:

a) Issues weather forecasts for the country as a whole and five regions. 

b) Issues warnings for tropical cyclones and it also names the tropical cyclones originating in the Northern Indian Ocean.

c) It detects and locate the earthquake epicenter, and evaluates the seismic activity in different parts of the country.

d) IMD warns against severe weather conditions such as rainfall, cyclones, dust storms,  heat and cold waves, Tsunami etc. 

4) Indian Meteorological Department in collaboration with ISRO uses INSAT and IR series satellite data for weather forecasting.

5) How Indian Meteorological Department predicts Monsoon?

IMD uses a statistical model that uses historical relationships between rainfall and six to eight predictors such as sea-surface temperatures and southeasterly winds over the Indian ocean etc. The statistical method was introduced by British in the 1920s. 

In 2016, IMD announced that it is replacing the statistical method with dynamic model, which is based on a U.S. model tweaked for India. 

IMD also announced that it is spending $60 million on a new supercomputer (Bhaskar) to improve the accuracy of Monsoon predictions.

For weather forecasting and climate monitoring in India, two supercomputers - Pratyush and Mihir are going to be used which provides a combined output of 6.8 Petaflops. It is first ever multi-petaflops High Performance Computing (HPC) facility ever built in India.

a) Pratyush is established at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune

b) Mihir is established at National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (NCMRW), Noida 

With this, India has become the fourth country in the world to use High Performance Computing (HPC) facility to predict weather and climate change after USA, UK and Japan.