Could the Indian Meteorological Depar-tment (IMD) have forewarned the people residing in J&K and upper regions of Himachal Pradesh about the unprecedented snowfall that has hit these states during the last fortnight, thereby giving the state administration lead time to prepare for climate-related calamities?
Climate experts are asking this question in the light of the huge qualitative improvement in weather forecasting that has taken place around the globe.
Prof. J. Srinivasan, with the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, pointed out that the kind of snow being witnessed in these states come from higher latitudes and cannot be predicted weeks in advance.
“The temperature gradient between the poles and the tropics drives the weather system in Europe (allowing them to make longer forecasts) but in the tropical regions, there is not much gradient and, therefore, making weather predictions is so much more difficult,” he said.
Climate experts argue that the launching of the Megha Tropiques, the first meteorological satellite with a low inclination orbit of 20 degrees that provides for a higher temporal sampling of rapidly evolving convective systems should have been able to provide estimates of rainfall, ice and surface wind speeds.
Prof. Srinivasan agrees that this new satellite will help in the study of clouds which have a lifetime range from a few hours to several weeks. Clouds help modulate the climate of the planet and in the tropics, they are much more unstable and this is what makes weather prediction more difficult.
It is for this reason, that weather predictions about the tropical regions made by met offices of the UK and US with their cutting edge technologies often go haywire, he said. During the last two decades, two satellite missions have provided new insights regarding the dynamics of topical climate. But it will take many more years to get accurate forecasting over longer spans of time, claim experts.