Short to medium range impact based forecasting of heavy rainfall in India

Abstract

There have been major advances in the last few decades in our understanding of heavy rainfall during monsoon season due to substantial progress in both observation and numerical modelling of monsoon. All these resulted in more accurate forecast of heavy rainfall in short to medium range, (upto five days) with 40% improvement in accuracy of heavy rainfall forecast in recent five years (2018-2022) as compared to previous five years. However, improvement of forecast and warning skill is not sufficient to minimize damage to lives and property. It is essential to extend to hazard forecast systems (hazard models) and then to impact and risk assessment with stakeholder interaction for risk based warning (RBW) and response action to protect lives and livelihoods   Considering all these, India Meteorological Department (IMD) has introduced impact based forecast (IBF) for heavy rainfall at meteorological sub-division level since July 2013 and at district and city scale in August, 2019 in its short to medium range forecasts and nowcasts indicating the likely impact of the heavy rainfall in different sectors and required response actions. Thereafter the IBF of heavy rainfall has undergone several changes over the years. Currently, the IBF being implemented by IMD includes all the four components, viz., (i) meteorological hazards, (ii) geophysical hazards, (iii) geospatial applications and (iv) socio-economic conditions and it utilises a web-GIS based decision support system (DSS). In this study we have reviewed various approaches and stages of development of IBF of heavy rainfall in India. The success of IBF of heavy rainfall will enhance the management of critical resources like agriculture, water & power and support urban and disaster management sectors among others while reducing loss of life and property.