Better forecasts on cyclones Hudhud and Nilopher, launching of an SMS service and App for weather updates and providing advisories to 10 million farmers on cellphones in 622 districts of India were the major highlights under the Earth Sciences Ministry during the NDA government's first year in office.
Also, the government will soon commission a supercomputer to enable better weather forecasting.
Jitendra Singh, the then Minister of State for Earth Sciences, had commissioned the Heliport Aviation Weather Forecasting System at Vaishnodevi in August last year while an X-band Radar was installed in Srinagar as part of the augmentation, strengthening and integration of the network in the Himalayan terrain, the ministry said in a statement here.
Also Read
In order to boost ocean and polar research, over Rs 1,050 crore was sanctioned for the acquisition of a Polar Research Vessel (PRV) in October last year. India also deployed first moored observatory in the Arctic on July 23 last year which is equipped with multi-sensor sub-surface observatory in the inner part of Kongsfjorden at a depth of 180m.
The mooring is capable of acquiring data even during winter, when the surface is frozen with ice.
It also developed the Polar Remotely Operated Vehicles (PROVe) systems having conductivity, temperature, dissolved oxygen sensors and irradiance meter. PROVe was deployed near ice shelf from the ship at the India Bay in Antarctica at a depth of 62m.
It also deployed a US drilling vessel, 'JOIDES Resolution', for the first time in the Arabian Sea for drilling the oceanic plate to a depth of 1.5-km. The expedition aims to understand the interaction between the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau uplift and the development and evolution of the Indian summer monsoon.
Four sites in the eastern Arabian Sea will target sediments for the Indus submarine fan to better understand the relationships of mountain building, weathering and erosion, and climate change, the ministry added.
