Should utilise MeT's improved heavy rainfall forecasts to save lives, property: IMD chief

NEW DELHI: India Meteorological Department chief Mrutyunjay Mohapatra on Tuesday said the agency's heavy rainfall forecasts have improved by 30 to 40 per cent over the past five years and should be utilised to minimise loss of lives and property during extreme precipitation events.

His remarks came amid claims by the Kerala government about the India Meteorological Department's (IMD) failure to predict extreme rainfall, which triggered a series of landslides in the Wayanad district on July 30, leading to the death of 226 people.

"There has been a 30 to 40 per cent improvement in India Meteorological Department's heavy rainfall prediction accuracy over the last five years, and it could further improve by 10 to 15 per cent in the next five to seven years with the augmentation of the observation network and numerical modelling systems," Mohapatra said in a video message played at the launch of a report by IPE Global and Esri India here.

At present, the weather agency predicts rainfall at the meteorological subdivision and district levels with an accuracy of 80 to 90 per cent 24 hours ahead and 60 per cent with a lead time of five days, he said.

"While the IMD is improving its forecast accuracy, its predictions should be utilised to minimise the loss of lives and property," Mohapatra said.

Scientists attributed the Wayanad landslides to a deadly mix of forest cover loss, mining in the ecologically fragile terrain and a prolonged spell of rain followed by an extreme precipitation event.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarai Vijayan last week said the IMD had only issued an 'orange' alert in Wayanad ahead of the landslides. However, the district received more than 572 millimetres of rainfall, which was extremely higher than what was predicted by the IMD.

Mohapatra said there has been immense progress in managing adverse weather-related disasters in India during the monsoon due to improvements in early warning systems and the delivery of weather and climate-related information to different stakeholders, including the general public and disaster managers.

The extremely heavy rainfall events are mesoscale in nature and occur in small areas. Therefore, very intense observational systems are required to predict such events, he said.

The IMD utilises data from around 6,850 rain gauges, satellites and radars, to predict rainfall across the country.

It plans to implement global, regional and hazard models to address different kinds of hazards occurring during the monsoon, including lightning, cyclones, heavy rain, thunderstorms, and heat waves (in areas not covered by the monsoon in the initial part of the season), the IMD chief said.

The IMD currently provides impact-based forecasts and risk-based warnings at the district level. Digital granular data pertaining to socioeconomic parameters and geospatial information is needed to provide location-specific, hyper-local forecasts, he said.

For this, Mohapatra emphasised the need for collaboration among different stakeholders, including the IMD, research institutions such as IITs, disaster managers, and policymakers.

During an online press conference on August 1, Mohapatra said the IMD issued forecasts for significant rainfall activity along the west coast of India on a regular basis and a red alert for Kerala in the early morning of July 30.

"The long-range forecast issued on July 25 indicated good rainfall activity along the west coast and central parts of the country from July 25 to August 1.

"We issued a yellow warning on July 25, which continued until July 29, when we issued an orange warning. A red warning was issued in the early morning of July 30, indicating that very heavy rainfall, up to 20 cm, was expected," he had said.

Kerala had been witnessing continuous rainfall activity and "accumulation of rainfall" is also an important factor behind landslides, he said.

The death toll in the landslides that rocked the hamlets of Wayanad last week has touched 226, the Kerala government said on Monday.

Among the dead, 97 were men, 88 women, and 37 children, as per the latest figures released by the Chief Minister's Office (CMO). As many as 2,514 people belonging to 723 families have been housed in the relief camps.