Shri Prithviraj Chavan, Hon’ble Minister of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences assured all Government support to India Meteorological Department (IMD) in order to modernize itself by procuring latest tools and models so as to increase the accuracy in weather forecast.

Shri Chavan was speaking on the occasion of 135th Foundation Day of IMD at Mausam Bhawan here today. He expressed the hope that IMD will be able to reinvent and reengineer itself to play a vital role that country expects of it. He stressed the need for setting up more High Power Computing System (HPCS) so that scientific and forecast capabilities of IMD may be boosted up.

The Minister mentioned that Government have made a provision of one billion dollar for a five-year programme named INSPIRE (Invention in Scientific Pursuit for Inspired Research) to attract best brain to science & Technology. He expressed satisfaction at the difficult job of monsoon prediction being handled by IMD. However, he emphasised that all possible efforts should be made to ensure further improvement in accuracy level of predictions.

Earlier Shri Chavan inaugurated the High Power Computing System (HPCS) at IMD headquarters. The HPCS is having a top speed of 14.4 Tera Flops and has 300 terabytes of storage with a robotic retrieval system with separate servers at 11 other Meteorological Centers across India. The system is capable of running High Resolution Global Regional and Local Numerical Weather Prediction Models on 24x7 basis which will further lead to improve weather & climate services from very short range to long range scales (months to seasons) for the country.

Dr. Shailesh Nayak, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences enumerating the achievements of IMD, pointed out that today fog monitoring system is online; agromet services are available on mobile and forecast about monsoon is made well in advance. He also emphasised that efforts should be made to bring the best brain to IMD. On this occasion mementoes and certificates were also distributed to veteran weather scientists and young students of various schools for best performance in quiz competition.

A.V.M. Dr. Ajit Tyagi, DG, IMD, Dr. R.R. Kelkar, former DG, IMD also addressed the gathering on this occasion.

Source : Press Information Bureau
Date : January 15, 2010