India gets weather system with best global resolution

The ministry of earth sciences on Monday launched Bharat Forecast System — considered to be among the world’s highest-resolution weather models — for operational forecasts up to panchayat level, with an aim to help address localised extreme weather events, officials said.

- Jayashree Nandi

NEW DELHI:

The launch of the high-resolution numerical global model comes at a time when the country is facing extreme weather events, including a recent series of intense dust storms and thunderstorms that hit north India last week, killing at least 12 people in Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR) alone.

“Bharat Forecast System has the highest resolution globally. As far as we understand, all others (models), including ECMWF (European centre for medium-range weather forecasts) are at 9 km or more resolution. A higher resolution will help us improve our spatial and temporal forecast significantly especially for small but intense weather events,” M Ravichandran, secretary, ministry of earth sciences, said.