Kolkata: The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) is setting up an X-band Doppler radar on the roof of the Diamond Harbour Women’s University.
IMD is expected to complete the set-up before Pujas. But it will start functioning a little later when it can predict the weather for an area within a radius of 150 km.
Another C-band Doppler radar is being set up in a research centre of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research at Malda in North Bengal. This can predict the weather for an area within a 300 km radius.
According to Habibur Rahman Biswas, Director, Alipore Weather Office, both radars will be functional next year.
Currently, there is one radar on top of Kolkata’s New Secretariat Building for predicting the weather of the entire West Bengal. This is an S-band radar and works in a 500km radius.
However, this radar is more than 20 years old and often breaks down. Therefore, another new radar is being planned in this location only.
For now, the new radar in Diamond Harbour Women’s University will serve Kolkata and the surrounding areas.
More importantly, the Sundarban region will fall within its radius. So it can predict cyclones and other thunderstorms and showers more accurately for Sundarban and other coastal areas.
It can predict and observe cloud formations and cloud onset more accurately.
The MoU was signed with Diamond Harbour Women’s University two years back. At 10 floors, this is the tallest building in that entire region.
The weather observatory near Diamond Harbour station will be moved to the University premises. This will help students study the weather better.
The Malda radar will be effective for the entire North Bengal and surrounding areas. The current Kolkata S-band radar is not so effective for North Bengal.
IMD is setting up several radars across the country to do nowcasting predictions in quick time. West Bengal will also benefit from radars coming up in Ranchi, Purnea and Gangtok.
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