JOIN USCentre to set up cyclone warning unit in Kerala
The central government on Tuesday announced setting up of a cyclone warning centre at Thiruvananthapuram by October and installing a new high-range weather radar at Mangaluru a year later in order to keep a better watch of extreme weather events in Karnataka and Kerala.
The C-band Doppler Weather Radar will be installed in Mangaluru by 2019 end to keep track of the storms, clouds and rain over Karnataka and northern parts of Kerala.
At present, there are five such weather radars along the west coast out of which two are in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.
With the Mangaluru radar in the place, there would be better monitoring of rainfall and severe weather events at Karnataka and Kerala so that people could be adequately warned, the ministry says in a statement.
“India Meteorological Department (IMD) unit at Thiruvananthapuram would be given additional responsibility to run the cyclone warning centre and monitor the extreme weather events in Kerala and Karnataka. We need some infrastructure and reorganisation of people. The centre is likely to be operational by October,” M Rajeevan, secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences said.
The IMD has developed many new models and tools right from now-casts (2-3 hours) to extended range forecasts (15-20 days’ lead time) for weather prediction, which would be put to use.
Once ready, the Thiruvananthapuram centre would be India's seventh cyclone centre, the need for which was felt following Cyclone Ockhi and few other cyclonic events that impacted the Kerala coast. The existing cyclone warning centres are located in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar and Kolkata.
The Mangalore radar would be a part of 10 C-band Doppler radar that the Ministry of Earth Sciences would be purchasing to boost its cyclone warning network. Some of the other sites where these radars would be installed include Port Blair, Ananthpur, Sambalpur and the second radar at Mumbai.