India Meteorological Department Launches AI-Enabled Monsoon Advance Forecasting System

Representative image NEW DELHI: India Meteorological Department on Tuesday launched two new services, including an AI-enabled monsoon advance forecasting system that will provide information on progress of the seasonal rainfall and "localised weather information" up to four weeks in advance to support farmers across 16 states and more than 3,000 sub-districts. The second product, launched as a pilot service, will provide high-resolution spatial rainfall forecast for Uttar Pradesh. It can generate operational rainfall forecasts at 1km resolution up to 10 days in advance, using dense observational networks and AI techniques. Similar services will gradually be extended to other parts of the country with the continuing growth of observational infrastructure. The pilot system uses advanced AI-driven downscaling techniques and integrates data from automatic rain gauges, automatic weather stations, doppler weather radars and satellite-based rainfall datasets. Besides using different modes, including mobile applications, SMS alerts, WhatsApp, Kisan portals, other digital platforms and television, hyperlocal forecast information will also be relayed through displays installed at vegetable and other markets. Union minister of earth sciences Jitendra Singh said the products mark a major shift from conventional weather forecasting towards impact-based and decision-support forecasting, capable of providing "precise, location-specific and actionable information" to farmers, administrators, disaster managers and citizens.