Weather Watch: Thunderstorm research test bed project to be ready by 2026, center tells parliament

Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju told the Lok Sabha on Wednesday that the country is preparing to establish its first dedicated thunderstorm research testbed project by 2026. The project will be concentrated in South Gangetic West Bengal, Eastern Jharkhand and Northern Odisha.

The project was conceived in the wake of rising mortality due to extreme weather events, including highly damaging thunderstorms and lightning, in major parts of India, especially the eastern states of Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar. According to media reports, thunderstorms and lightning killed more than 700 people in the country in 2022. Bihar bore the brunt with more than 180 lives lost, followed by Jharkhand (62) and Uttar Pradesh (64).

Thunderstorms have increased in the eastern region, including West Bengal, especially between April and May, and have become more severe as climatic conditions change.

The minister said the project will help the India Meteorological Department (IMD) understand the formation, development and propagation of thunderstorms in eastern India and use this understanding science to improve existing models and their operational forecasting capabilities.

As part of the project, the ministry proposes to purchase two drones for monitoring weather parameters in the atmospheric boundary layer before thunderstorms and for damage observation after thunderstorms.

“The Thunderstorm Research Testbed project is not a stand-alone project. It is being planned to complement the existing atmospheric observation infrastructure in East India. The project will also benefit from additional infrastructure planned in the region under the Ministry of Earth Sciences’ programme, said the union minister.

In addition to the five-day impact-based forecast, the weather department currently provides three-hour thunderstorm nowcast warnings for all major towns in 732 districts. It uses the ground-based lightning array network of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune and the Indian Air Force to validate district-level nowcasting.

Besides expanding the nationwide network of automatic weather stations, the IMD recently commissioned four Doppler weather radars at Lansdowne, Banihal, Murari Devi, Jot and Surkanda Devi, taking the total number of DWRs to 39.