Weather Forecasting

Government has not given any direction to formulate a plan to use satellite to accurately predict calamities like landslides and heavy rainfall.

However, National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) is connected to Ministry of Home Affairs, New Delhi and National Disaster Management Authority by a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for transferring images and information of the areas affected by a disaster.

NRSC does not receive any meteorological information through satellite. The data from meteorological satellites are directly received by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and all possible meteorological data is generated in real time. The data available from other polar satellites such as Oceansat-2 that generates marine surface meteorological information apart from ocean state observations is made available from NRSC’s website in near real time.

Union Minister of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Shri S.Jaipal Reddy gave this information in reply to a written question in the Lok Sabha today.

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ST/-