The impact-based forecast will improve to become “more granular, specific and accurate” by 2025 and IMD will be able to provide forecasts up to panchayat level clusters and specific areas in cities in the coming years

augmentation of radars, automatic weather stations and rain gauges and satellites to improve predictability, Mohapatra said.

“We have put up six radars in the northwest Himalayas and four more will be installed this year. The procurement process is on for eight radars in the northeast Himalayan region.

“There are certain gap areas in the rest of the country that will be filled up with 11 radars. The number of radars will increase from 34 at present to 67 by 2025,” the IMD chief said.

Radars are preferred because they have a higher resolution and can provide observations every 10 minutes.

The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) also plans to upgrade its high-performance computing system -- from a capacity of 10 petaflops currently to 30 petaflops in the next two years -- which will help assimilate more data into the model that can then be run at higher resolutions.

The lower the range of a weather model, the higher its resolution and the greater the precision.

At present, the IMD-MoES weather modelling system has a resolution of 12 kilometres.

The target is to make it six kilometres.

Similarly, the resolution of the regional modelling system will be improved from three kilometres to one kilometre.

“We are providing forecasts up to the district and block levels currently. Going ahead, we will provide forecasts up to clusters at the panchayat level and specific locations within cities,” Mohapatra said.

The Met office is working to better the impact-based forecast in collaboration with state governments and other stakeholders including the Indian Space Research Organisation.