Mission Mausam: All you need to know about the Rs 2,000 crore project

The Mission Mausum will include creating a laboratory to artificially develop clouds

In a bid to improve accuracy in forecasts and nowcasts, the Union cabinet has approved “Mission Mausam”.

The mission to make India “weather-ready” and “climate smart” will kick-start this month and will be chiefly led by the India Meteorological Department (IMD). It will have an outlay of Rs 2,000 crore over the next two years.

What are the key objectives of “Mission Mausum”?

India plans to establish a network of 100 radars across the country by March 2026 to boost its weather forecasting observations. Around 39 radars are already functional but now it aims at adding 61 S-band, C-band and X-band radars with varying detection range.

While the S-band radars have a detection range of 400 km, the range for C-band is up to 200 km and X-band is up to 100 km. At present, India has a radar at every 432 km in comparison to the US, which has one at every 150 km. Here are the key goals.

•Develop weather surveillance technologies and systems

•Implement Higher resolution atmospheric observations with better temporal and spatial sampling/coverage

•Implement next-generation radars, and satellites with advanced instrument payloads

•Implement high-performance computers

•Improve understanding of weather and climate processes and prediction capabilities

•Develop improved earth system models, and data-driven methods

• Build technologies for weather management

•Develop state-of-art dissemination system for last-mile connectivity

What is "cloud chamber"?

The “Mission Mausum” will include creating a laboratory to artificially develop clouds, increasing the number of radars by over 150 per cent and adding new satellites and supercomputers among other things. The lab will be created at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune.  According to reports, the scientists will artificially create clouds in this lab to be able to modify them as per need. “We want to be able to do weather modification, and artificially suppress and enhance rain. For this we need to study how clouds form at varying altitudes. The lab will be set up in the next 18 months, and by next five years, we want to be able to at least do some simulation for modifying rain or hail within the laboratory,” Union Ministry of Earth Sciences Secretary, M Ravichandran, told PTI . “We want to explore the science of weather intervention. In the long-term, we want to learn how to manage weather better.”

What is the need of Mission Mausum?

According to the Ministry of Earth Sciences, tropical weather forecasting remains challenging due to the complexity of atmospheric processes and limitations in current observation and model resolution.

Observational data is relatively sparse, both spatially and temporally, and the horizontal resolution of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models, currently at 12 kilometres, makes it difficult to accurately forecast small-scale weather events in India, it said.

At the same time, climate change is making the atmosphere more chaotic, resulting in isolated heavy rainfall and localised droughts, which pose simultaneous challenges of flooding and drought. Cloudbursts, thunderstorms, lightning and squalls are among the least understood weather events in India.  “Tropical weather patterns are much more chaotic and variable. So, there should not be any place without a radar. In the next five years, we will set up that infrastructure which will improve our forecasting skills tremendously, and also help us manage the weather. This is just the first phase,” said Ravichandran. “We will start issuing the tenders soon.”