Jitendra Singh addressed the 148th foundation day of the IMD. (File)
Union minister Jitendra Singh on Sunday said the Met department's severe weather prediction accuracy improved by around 40 per cent in the last eight to nine years.
Addressing the 148th foundation day of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the minister said disaster-related mortality has dropped to single digit with improvement in forecast.
He said the number of doppler radars in the county has increased from 15 in 2013 to 37 in 2023. India will add 25 more radars in the next 2-3 years, taking the number to 62, he added.
"The entire country will be covered by doppler radars by 2025," he said.
The IMD on Sunday commissioned four doppler weather radars in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jammu and Kashmir which will bolster its weather monitoring capabilities in the western Himalayan region.
These four DWRs have been installed at Banihal Top in Jammu and Kashmir, Jot and Murari Devi in Himachal Pradesh and Surkanada Devi in Uttarakhand.
Mr Singh also dedicated 200 agro automatic weather stations for agriculture advisory to the nation.
IMD DG Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said the department's severe weather forecast (heavy rainfall, thunderstorm, fog, heat wave, cold wave has improved by 40 to 50 per cent in the last five years.
He said the existing doppler radars will be upgraded to remove uncertainty in rainfall estimates. Ten doppler lidars will be commissioned in the Himalayan region.
The environment monitoring network will be further augmented by increasing the number of sky radiometres from 20 to 30 by 2025, he said.
By 2025, the number of stations in the black carbon monitoring network will be increased from 25 to 45. The number of stations in the surface ozone monitoring network will go up from 7 to 25 and that in the precipitation chemistry network from 11 to 21, the DG said.
The IMD also aims to establish 660 District Agro Meteorological Units (DAMUs) by 2025 and increase the coverage from 3,100 blocks in 2023 to 7,000 blocks in 2025, he said.
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