By Our Correspondent
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s remark against restrictions on imports of telecom equipment from China may have raise much hue and cry, but the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) expects to improve its weather predictions courtesy radars imported from China.
Though the Union home ministry has banned import of telecom equipment from Chinese company Huawei for installation in border areas because of security concerns, it has given the green signal for Doppler radars made in China. Many of these radars will be installed near the international borders and will be useful to the ministries of defence, agriculture and civil aviation among others. An official of the ministry of earth sciences, to which the IMD belongs, said, “Our forecasts will be more accurate as we set up these Doppler weather radars across the country. It will help us to track and predict thunderstorms, cyclones and cloudbursts within a radius of at least 500 km.
“The radars, manufactured by the Beijing Metstar Radar Company, will be installed at a height of 16 metres on top of high rise structures,” he informed.
Each Doppler radar with additional equipment will cost Rs 10 crore and an additional Rs 6 crore will be incurred for the infrastructure needed to install the new system. The installation of Chinese radars is part of the Rs 1000 crore modernization programme of the IMD.
The annual Indo-China trade amounts to US $ 38 billion and is expected to go up further.
The official said: “Work is now in full swing in all 15 locations across the country to install the radars. In some places, the installation is likely to be completed before the onset of monsoon next month.”
These Chinese made radars will also help the ministry of defence particularly the Indian Air Force as well as private airlines under the ministry of civil aviation as accurate weather forecasts are extremely important for them. The Doppler radars will be installed at Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Patna, Goa, Patiala, Mohan-bari and Dibrugarh, Lucknow, Paradip, Karaikal, Kochi, Bhopal, Nagpur and Agartala.
The official said, “The Chinese Doppler radar will be operated round the clock. Its working speed would be very high and it will cover a wide area. It will also be much better and more advanced than conventional radars, which are being presently used by the IMD. The newly imported radars will pick up more accurate information about the turbulence and wind speed of the atmosphere before a cyclone or heavy shower.”
In fact with the radars, wewill be able to predict the quantity of rainfall, and also the rainfall average during prolonged showers. It will also be of great help to the ministry of agriculture and the state governments.The radars are named after Austrian physicist Christian Doppler and at present the IMD has four German made Doppler radars stationed at Visakhapatnam, Machhlipatnam, Chennai and Kolkata.