ISRO And Department of Atomic Energy Together Develop Advanced Weather Doppler Radar
Doppler weather radar gives very accurate information. Till now India was importing these radars. ISRO and Department of Atomic Energy have jointly installed Weather Doppler Radar in Kalpakkam.
The nuclear island at Kalpakkam will have a wind profile radar to get continuous data on three dimensional winds for weather prediction and also for atmospheric dispersion modelling of radionuclide releases in the event of extremely unlikely accidents, said officials.
The Kalpakkam nuclear island houses two 220-MW power units of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), 13-MW fast breeder test reactor (FBTR), 30-KW mini reactor KAMINI.
Further, the 500-MW Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) is also being built at Kalpakkam by Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd (BHAVINI).
"The wind profiler is being installed at Kalpakkam DAE (Department of Atomic Energy) site to obtain continuous data on 3-dimensional winds in the lower and middle troposphere for site specific weather prediction and atmospheric dispersion modelling of radionuclide releases in the event of extremely unlikely accidents," a senior official of Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR).
"An Online Nuclear Emergency Response System (ONERS) is developed for guidance and decision support in the event of nuclear/radiological emergencies. The continuous wind profile from wind profile radar becomes valuable input for assimilation in Weather Prediction and dispersion models," the official added.
According to the official, the data also will be useful to study the turbulence, mesoscale circulations, and convective phenomena around this tropical site.
Currently, there are 39 Doppler Weather Radars (DWRs) well distributed across the country to monitor severe weather events.
With this current deployment of DWR network, India Meteorological Department (IMD) has made an immense improvement in forecasting weather events. Some important achievements are given below;
The nowcast accuracy, i.e. Probability of Detection (PoD) has increased from 61% in 2014 to 91% in 2023
No cyclone has gone undetected due to the coastal Radars
The heavy rainfall events in plains and hilly areas are also better detected and predicted.
Moreover, the data from these DWRs are assimilated in various state-of-the-art regional and global dynamical models for generating the forecasts at various temporal and spatial scales. Radar observations are helping in further tuning the model forecasts and warning at local scale in terms of severity and detection of cyclones, rains, thunderstorms. The nowcast model, viz. High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Modelling System (IMD-HRRR) and Electric Weather Research and Forecasting (EWRF) model use Radar data for prediction of rainfall and thunderstorm in 6 to 12 hours advance.
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