9 October 2020.
Introduction:
According to Director General Mrutunjay Mohapatra India Meteorology Department will release dynamic and impact-based cyclone warnings for districts this season to minimize economic losses and damage to property due to the intense weather system.
Highlights:
- The new system will give specific warnings about the kind of infrastructure that is likely to be damaged and these can be mapped.
- Aim is to reduce the damage and economic losses caused to property and infrastructure.
- Under the system, location or district-specific tailored warnings, which factor in the local population, infrastructure, settlements, land use and other elements, will be prepared and disseminated.
- All disaster management agencies will make extensive use of cartographic, geological and hydrological data available for the district concerned.
- The National Disaster Management Authority is executing this project and developing a web-based Dynamic Composite Risk Atlas (Web-DCRA) in collaboration with IMD and coastal states.
- At the event organised by Indian Society of Remote Sensing’s ‘Chasing Cyclones’ Mohapatra also pointed out that the damage caused to infrastructure due to cyclones is increasing worldwide.
- IMD this cyclone season will also launch an interactive display system to forecast cyclone track and intensity on GIS platform.
About IMD:
- It operates under Ministry of Earth Sciences. It is headquartered in Delhi. It operates hundreds of earth observation stations in India. They are mainly located in Mumbai, Nagpur, Kolkata and Pune.
.
- India operates meteorological stations in Antarctica under Project Maitri.
- IMD is also responsible to forecast, monitor the tropical cyclones in Indian Ocean Region. It includes Malacca Straits, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal.
- In 2016, IMD launched “SAMAR” to study the concentration of Black carbon, environmental visibility, radiative properties of aerosols. SAMAR is System of Aerosol Monitoring and Research. The project has 16 aethalometers, 12 nephelometers and 12 sky radio meters.
- Aethalometers are instruments used to measure optically absorbing suspended Particulate Matter. They are usually black in colour. Nephelometers are instruments used to measure particulates suspended in gas or liquid.