Cyclone warning services in India during recent years: A review
M. Mohapatra, M. Sharma
Abstract
India experiences various types of natural hazards including cyclones, floods, droughts, earthquake, landslides, heat wave, cold wave, thunder squalls and tornadoes. Most of these hazards (about 80%) are hydrometeorological in nature. Among the hydrometeorological hazards, the cyclones over the North Indian Ocean (NIO) pose a potential threat to coastal population as well as marine community of the region. The risk management of the cyclones depends on several factors including (i) hazard & vulnerability analysis, (ii) preparedness & planning, (iii) early warning, (iv) prevention and mitigation. The early warning component includes (i) skill in monitoring and prediction, (ii) effective warning products generation and dissemination, (iii) coordination with disaster response units and (iv) public awareness & perception about the credibility of early warning of cyclone issued by India Meteorological Department (IMD). Though there have been significant improvement in cyclone monitoring and warning system in recent years due to modernization programme of Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES)/IMD and policy frame work of Govt of India, there is still scope for improvement at state and district level in terms of (i) improving the mesoscale hazard detection and monitoring in association with cyclone, (ii) improving the spatial and temporal scale of forecasts through technological upgradation, (iii) warning communication to last mile and disaster managers through state of art technology, (iv) developing synergized standard operation procedure among the early warning agencies and user agencies and (v) real time impact based forecast and risk based warning. All these aspects have been discussed with special emphasis on climatological characteristics (spatial and temporal distribution and intensity etc.), damage potential, modeling and prediction, Prediction skills, information dissemination mechanisms, socio-economic impacts, achievements in recent years, existing gap areas and future scope.