By IANS
New Delhi : India is set to launch an advanced meteorological satellite by the end of this year to boost its weather forecasting capabilities.
The satellite INSAT-3D will give “quantum jump in satellite meteorology”, P.S. Goel, secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said Tuesday.
This satellite is almost similar to GOES Satellites of the US and will have six channel imagers.
Goel spoke about the satellite at the ongoing Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Workshop on Weather Forecasting Techniques in the national capital.
The INSAT-3D data will provide quantitative outputs like vertical profiles of temperature and humidity, atmospheric motion vectors, sea surface temperature, snow cover and other related forecasts.
All these data will be used in weather forecasting by conventional methods and most of it will be assimilated in numerical weather prediction models to achieve greater accuracy, Goel added.
Ministry officials said that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is also planning to launch Oceansat-II and Meghatropique Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites in the future, which will also help in accurate weather forecasting.
Sixteen foreign delegates from SAARC countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and a large number of Indian scientists are participating in the conference.
The delegates will share expertise on meteorology in the region during the seminar that began Tuesday.
The delegates will discuss accurate day-to-day weather forecasting including early warnings of tropical cyclones, heavy precipitation, western disturbances, seasonal and long-range rainfall prediction, forecasting floods, snow and avalanche among others.
The INSAT 3D data will be important for accurate forecasting and monitoring of these events especially for cyclones and floods as they lead to major disasters.