The Business of Weather Forecasting is Heating Up in India And A Moody Monsoon Could be the Catalyst

Earlier this month, when the India Meteorological Department (IMD) declared an early arrival of the southwest monsoon, there was an obvious sense of relief. The agency, however, came under fire from several independent meteorologists and private forecasters who questioned if it had jumped the gun.

The IMD, however, stood firm on its initial forecast and maintained that all the conditions have been satisfactorily met and monsoon has actually commenced over Kerala three days in advance. In the days that followed, the monsoon current turned out to be weak, and the progress slow.

Amid all the hubbub what emerged was a stark comparison and signs of increasing competition between the government and private players in the business of weather forecasting.

“It is expected,” says Dr KS Hosalikar who heads IMD’s Climate Research and Services, referring to the entry of private players. “As the demand for weather information grows, this will happen, and it is positive for the growth of the sector too. But IMD has an experience of nearly 150 years, with huge infrastructure and capabilities. So, if the private forecasters can complement it, rather than compete, it will probably help to meet the common goal of ensuring that the weather forecast reaches the last mile.”

The senior scientist was also quick to aver that the onus for accurate forecasts lies with IMD. “As a nodal agency, it is accountable to the public. We declared the onset over Mumbai only after we were sure of the strengthening of westerlies from Arabian Sea over land, and an offshore trough, which only happens during monsoon. All this requires a lot of patience. But there is a common misconception that onset of monsoon has to be marked by heavy rain. It is just one of the conditions,” he adds.

With its eyes on the ocean, atmosphere and the land for over a century, the IMD has indeed collected a treasure trove of data, which makes its capabilities incomparable with any private agency. Its forecasting prowess has been further boosted with huge government investment in supercomputers, forecasting models, weather stations, modelling teams and observational network of satellites – and support from premier institutes like the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and INCOIS.

“But after all, it is weather science, and no one can be infallible in weather forecasting,” says GP Sharma, president of meteorology at Skymet Weather Services — the Noida-based private forecaster which was among the first to call out IMD for declaring the onset early. Recently, Cyclone Asani had also managed to stump the agency, when it changed its course close to the east coast.

“We cannot match the magnitude of funding and resources that IMD has, but we are trying to do the best we can through the data and observational network available to us. In the last few years, we have expanded our automatic weather stations to more states, and increased computational abilities,” says Sharma, who formerly worked with the Indian Air Force.

For Skymet, which started its operations in 2003, the journey to releasing its own monsoon forecasts post 2013 has been long. Over the last decade, the company has managed to tie up with several clients across sectors like shipping, power, oil, as well as state governments, including those of Kerala and Maharashtra for weather services.

According to Sharma, the huge requirement to keep the agricultural community well-informed of the weather, especially the monsoon, has helped the company grow.

For a nation, whose significant share of GDP comes from agriculture that provides livelihood to more than half of its 1.3 billion population, monsoon is indeed the biggest factor in determining its economic growth. Its accurate forecast keeps the entire country on tenterhooks for a major part of the year – and it is this huge opportunity that has tempted several private forecasters to jump into the fray.

The availability of huge amount of meteorological data from global agencies in the public domain, coupled with their own automatic weather stations, has enabled the independent meteorologists to provide services. However, they still rue the lack of data from IMD.

But then there is the question of accountability, worry government scientists.

Dr DS Pai, who earlier headed the climate division at IMD Pune and is now the director of Institute of Climate Change Studies in Kerala, seems unfazed by the comparisons. “Being the nodal agency, IMD is answerable to people and the government. The stakes are high, so the level of confidence on a forecast need to be much higher too. To add to it, the department runs its own forecasting models, generates its own data, and then issues a forecast, unlike other agencies which use that model output and make their own inferences. There is a difference in the two approaches,” he contends.

Nonetheless, the rapid advancement in supercomputers, satellite and remote sensing technology, and smartphones has revolutionised meteorology. The demand for weather and climate forecast information has shot up and will increase even further in the coming years with the rise of climate change-induced extreme weather events.

“Such changes will affect the way weather and climate forecasts are produced and used,” said World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Secretary-General Prof Petteri Taalas in the organisation’s latest top-level dialogue session on the future of weather and climate forecasting last week. The global body too has been drawing attention to this swiftly changing landscape of stakeholders in climate forecasting and carrying out a drive to strengthen collaboration and Public-Private Engagement (PPE) in climate forecasting.

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