Local institutions need empowerment to fully harness Bharat Forecast system

With enhanced predictions of floods, heatwaves, and cyclones, state governments and emergency services will be in a position to act swiftly to mitigate damage

At a time when climate change has upended historical weather patterns and increased the frequency of extreme weather events, India’s proactive stride in modernising its meteorological capabilities remains critical. The Ministry of Earth Sciences’ recent launch of the Bharat Forecast System (BFS) is a welcome step in this direction. Capable of predicting weather at a granular 6-kilometre grid resolution, the BFS harnesses more powerful supercomputing facilities and is a significant improvement over current weather-forecast models, which generate predictions over gridded squares of 12 km sides or an area as big as 144 sq km. Additionally, instead of breaking the globe