PANJIM: Goa will have to wait till the 2017 monsoon to get more accurate rainfall forecast and wind velocity, as the installation of the high-tech Doppler radar at the State’s meteorological observatory, at Altinho, has been delayed further. This will be the seventh monsoon in a row, since the government has proposed the installation of the facility, replacing its over a decade-old cyclonic detection radar.
The Chinese-made radar that was shifted out of the State for security reasons by the Union Defence Ministry and Ministry of Earth Science, in 2012, is now being installed and according to the observatory in-charge this will take at least three to four months.
“The installation of the radar is in process. It is not an easy task. It is very technical and will take another three to four months to get installed fully,” Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) Goa Director V K Mini told Herald. “The system would be put to use during the next monsoon in 2017. It will help us in giving accurate weather forecast,” she said.
A state-of-the-art Doppler radar, costing Rs 5 crore, was supposed to be commissioned in 2010.
“With the new radar we will be able to forecast the weather or wind even two to three days in advance. Right now the latest forecast is of 24 hours,” Mini said, adding that the system would be operated 24 hours through the special control station.
The decision to install the sophisticated equipment was taken following the death of around 70 fishermen from the State as a result of Phyan cyclone in 2009. In the absence of radar, the IMD had failed to warn the trawler owners about the coming storm.
The Met department’s Altinho unit had de-commissioned the old radar in December 2008. It was installed in 2002 in Goa after it successfully served West Bengal for almost a decade. The installation was taken for seamless forecast and forewarning about cyclones, heavy rainfall, riverine and urban floods apart from catastrophes like the tsunami that hit the east coast.
The ministry of earth sciences ruled out installation of the radar, following directives from the security establishment like Indian Navy and Defence Ministry that restricted installation of radar made by Chinese companies in ‘security sensitive’ coastal zones across the country in 2012.
However, the failure to set in motion the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) radar for the coastal state, forced Union Defence Ministry to give its green signal to China made radar in 2014.
