KATHMANDU, April 4: At a time when climate change and its impact on human lives have motivated many developing countries to modernize their weather forecasting system, Nepal is still dependent on traditional methods and technologies.
The Meteorological Forecasting Division (MFD), a unit of Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, established to forecast weather conditions across the country for years has been mostly dependent on manual observation."It is a sad reality that our daily weather reports are based on manual observation. Data recorded in various stations, including satellite image of weather disturbances, are traced in a wide chart. The results are further compared with other international weather reports and finally disseminated to the public," said meteorologist Barun Paneru.
"We don't have our own satellite and our knowledge regarding weather and climate conditions has helped us make numerous predictions," he added.
After receiving weather reports from various stations, the data after further analysis with international weather reports are traced on a wide sheet of paper called synoptic weather charts. The printed flow of wind, traces of clouds, their movement and the status of high or low pressure help weather experts predict further climatic conditions.
In case of Nepal, this manually operated method has been regularly used to forecast weather condition, whereas in other neighboring countries, various advanced methods are being used to forecast weather reports for at least 3 days in advance.
"Compared to other computer adaptive methods where reports are received at the press of a button, this procedure is definitely a primitive one and we have been using it since the inception of MFD," said another meteorologist Ram Chandra Karki.
Moreover, he further emphasized the lack of upper air data and technologies that help produce better weather results.
"Until now, we are dealing only with surface air or ground level data. When it comes to producing best weather predictions, we will need weather reports kilometers above the group where the air pressure and movement of wind is highly variable," said Karki.
With 17 Automatic Weather Stations (AWS), there are 306 stations dedicated to measure rainfall, including 103 climatic and agro-meteorological weather stations across the country.
"Although we have numerous weather stations, the erratic topography of Nepal always hinders our effort in making weather predictions. This is one of the main reasons we fail to make correct forecast despite correct readings," said Karki.
Meanwhile, Director General of DHM, Sarju Baidya assured that these anomalies will be removed after the completion of ongoing PPCR (Pilot Program for Climate Resilience). Among four other components of the project, BRCH (Building Resilience to Climate Change Related Hazards) has been implemented solely to enhance the capacity of DHM. The whole project has been financed through Climate Investment Fund.
"Currently we are in the developing phase of the project. Within the next three years, the whole department will be modernized with computer adaptive weather prediction methods, there will be advance weather forecasting tools and even the weather prediction will be available for at least three days," said Baidya.