Second Doppler likely for Mumbai

Mumbai: Hardly two years after Mumbai's first Doppler radar was installed in Navy Nagar, the city may get another one soon. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has sought a second Doppler radar for the city in the next five-year-plan.
"We have proposed an additional Doppler radar for Mumbai in the five-year plan," Dr Ajit Tyagi, director general of meteorology at IMD, Delhi, said at an event in Mumbai recently.
Explaining the need for a second Doppler radar, S G Kamble, director of Doppler weather radar in IMD, Mumbai, said this one will be necessary at the airport. "We need terminal Doppler weather radar for the airport so that we can get advanced warning of heavy rainfall spells and cyclones," he said.
"We are going to put up a C-band Doppler radar for the airport, which will be compatible with aviation signals and will also be able to provide city forecasts. Once the plan is approved, we will float a global tender and get the radar from t5he company that quotes the lowest price," said K S Hosalikar, scientist at the Regional Meteorological Centre at Colaba.
Incidentally, the older radar, which took about five years to be installed after the plan was approved, still has some technical glitches which have to be resolved before it can work to optimum capacity. The IMD says there is a signal interference in the radar. "The radar works with a circumference of 500 kilometers. The exisiting radar does give us weather conditions of Ahmedabad and Goa, with Mumbai at its point of center," explained Kamble.
21/01/12 Pratibha Masand/Times of India

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Categories: airports Jan 2012