Mission Mausam

Posted 17 Oct 2024

Updated 22 Oct 2024

4 min read

Why in the News?

Recently, Union Cabinet approved Mission Mausam with a budget outlay of 2,000 crores.

Mission Mausam is envisaged to be a multi-faceted initiative to tremendously boost India's weather and climate-related science, research, and services
Key Features:
- Establish a wide network of radars and satellites, wind profilers, radiometers, High-Performance Computers (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) based models for multi-faceted weather observation and prediction.
- Setting up a ‘cloud-simulation chamber’ at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) to be used for testing weather interventions like cloud seeding.
Implementing Ministry: Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES)
- Three Institutes under MoES- Indian Meterological Department (IMD), National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), and Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) would primarily implement the mission.

Make India Weather Ready and Climate Smart: Expand understanding on the physical processes and science of weather forecasting at spatial and temporal scales.
Timely Updates and Services: Offer regular updates on the changing parameters like wind speeds, pressure, etc. ensuring capacity building and community resilience.
Benefit different sectors: Like agriculture, disaster management, tourism, health, etc. along with data-driven decision making in urban planning, road and rail transport, etc.
Empowers Stakeholders: It will help to better equip stakeholders, including citizens and last-mile users, in tackling extreme weather events and the impacts of climate change.
New Approach to Forecasting: Offering umbrella model, with improved accuracy of forecasts including providing hyper local forecasts.
Last Mile Prediction: Up to the Panchayat level with a lead time of 10 to 15 days and improves the Nowcast frequency from 3 to 1 hour.
- Nowcast provides very short-term prediction, usually for next few hours and is useful for tracking fast-changing weather events such as thunderstorms, etc.

Complexity of Atmospheric Processes: Tropical location and unpredictability of Monsoon has made forecast trickier in India.
Low Local Forecast Capability: IMD is currently able to forecast weather events over a 12 km x 12 km area, providing forecast for a city but not for a specialised location within the city.
Inadequate Forecasting Equipment: Currently, IMD has installed 39 Doppler radars and no wind profiler compared to China (217 radars, 128 wind profilers).
Poor Interpretation of forecast: Recurrent misses in the forecast is attributed to poor interpretation of satellite images, radars and other data by weathermen.
Role of Climate Change: Makes the weather patterns erratic causing isolated and localized instances of heavy rainfall and droughts.
- Phenomenon like cloudbursts, thunderstorms, etc. is not well-understood currently.

Monsoon Mission (2012): Umbrella framework to predict weather on multiple timescales, improve long-range monsoon forecast for better economic planning.
Weather Information Network and Data System (WINDS): By Ministry of Agriculture to generate long-term, hyper-local weather data helping farmers.
PRITHvi VIgyan (PRITHVI) Scheme: By MoES. It encompasses five on-going sub-schemes:
- Atmosphere & Climate Research-Modelling Observing Systems & Services (ACROSS)
- Ocean Services, Modelling Application, Resources and Technology (O-SMART)
- Polar Science and Cryosphere Research (PACER)
- Seismology and Geosciences (SAGE) and
- Research, Education, Training and Outreach (REACHOUT).
Earth Observation Satellites: INSAT-3D (2013), INSAT-3DR (2016) and INSAT-3DS (2024).
Initiatives by IMD: Offers Current Weather, Nowcast, City Forecast, Rainfall Information, All India Multi-hazard Winter Warning Bulletin, etc.
Mobile Applications: MAUSAM (weather forecasting) Meghdoot (Agromet advisory dissemination), Damini (lightning alert), etc.
MoES operationalised Pratyush and Mihir for weather forecasting in 2018.

Investing in Research & Development: To understand the complexities posed by climate change and harnessing the potential of AI that offers better prediction at lower cost.
Coordination between agencies and experts: Including urban and infrastructure planners to take into account the local ecology and socio-economic conditions.
Continuous upgradation of weather forecasting infrastructure: Along with installation of ocean observation systems and high-resolution Earth Observation satellites.
Addressing regional disparities: Optimum coverage of Eastern and North-eastern regions with Doppler radars.
Partnership between Public and Private Sector: To complement the work of IMD in providing advanced technological breakthroughs, developing forecasting equipment, etc.