NEW DELHI, July 27 — The Ministry of Earth Sciences celebrated its 20th Foundation Day at Prithvi Bhawan in New Delhi on Monday, using the occasion to launch a clutch of new initiatives spanning weather forecasting, seismology and marine research.
The event, presided over by Secretary Dr N. Kalaiselvi, saw the India Meteorological Department announce 13 new Centres of Excellence for specialised meteorological research, an upgrade of the Thiruvananthapuram Cyclone Warning Centre to a full Area Cyclone Warning Centre, and a new thunderstorm nowcasting tool called IMD NOVA. The IMD also signed an agreement with ICAR's veterinary epidemiology institute to set up a unit forecasting weather-linked animal disease risk at the district level.
Separately, the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting launched a mobile app called WINGS for real-time weather analysis and introduced a national radar mosaic to track severe weather systems, while the National Centre for Seismology released updated earthquake catalogues and a strong-motion atlas covering a decade of ground-shaking data to support earthquake engineering.
For aspirants, the Ministry of Earth Sciences and its constituent bodies — IMD, NCMRWF, NCS and the marine research centre CMLRE — are worth knowing individually, since questions often test which agency is responsible for which function.