When Skymet, a private weather services company, came out with its own monsoon forecast even before the IMD this year, it brought a whiff of competition for the met department, as well as a possible opening for privatisation of weather forecasting
When Skymet, a private weather services company, pre-empted the India Meteorological Department (IMD) this year in coming out with a monsoon forecast even before the IMD, it set a precedent. No other organisation, private or government, has ever competed with the IMD in monsoon forecasting. By doing this, Skymet Weather Services has come as a dose of competition for the IMD as well as a possible opening for the privatisation of weather forecasting in India. ?(Forecasting by private organisations) is a bit like selling medicines without clinical trials,? says DS Pai, head of Long Range Forecasting, IMD, adding, ?Our predictions are as good as anywhere in the world. This cannot be done without government support and private companies will not spend that much money without getting returns.? He adds that the IMD?s predictions have been correct and are based on access to a lot of data globally as well as in-house expertise, which no private agency could have. Private weather agencies can work in smaller countries but for a vast country like India, the infrastructure needed is bigger, he feels. ?A lot of resources go into forecasting so there is a need for a dedicated telecom network for met observatories, global sharing of data and collaborative research, huge computing powers and expertise. The IMD has a 100-year-old history of doing this work,? he says.
Skymet this year made public its monsoon 2013 forecast and predicted normal rainfall days before the official IMD forecast was made on April 26. Interestingly, a day before the IMD?s forecast, Maharashtra agriculture minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil said the IMD?s monsoon forecast isn?t reliable. The Maharashtra state government is establishing a network of 2,061 weather stations to provide information to various departments and the minister said once these stations are operational, they would use Skymet for analysis and providing advisory services to farmers. He has appointed Skymet as a consulting partner and wants to use its services for forecast as well as other data services.
Skymet, founded by Jatin Singh, is just 10 years old and offers weather-based business solutions for media, power, shipping and telecom sectors. It also provides risk management services to power, renewable energy, aviation, construction, food and beverage industries in India. Skymet started by providing weather infographics to newspapers and now provides seasonal, as well as short-range forecasts. The venture is backed by Omnivore Partners, an early-stage agricultural technology-focused VC. It is also a Villgro incubatee. Villgro is a social enterprise incubator that focuses on incubating innovative products and services that use market-based models to positively impact rural India. However, it is early days for Skymet.
Pai believes seasonal predictions have their limitations but the IMD is doing its best using globally accepted models to make skilfull forecasts. As of now, forecasting is done using a low-cost statistical model which is useful but has its limitation as it cannot make forecasts for smaller regions. For this, a dynamic model is needed and the government and its agencies have been working to develop this model for close to a decade. The research is going on at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM). ?We will compare the model for a few years more and then start using it,? says Pai. This is part of the Monsoon Mission launched by the Earth System Sciences Organisation (ESSO) to improve forecasting in the short-range to the long-range time scales. The ESSO and IITM are coordinating with climate research in India, the US, UK, Japan, Korea and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Centre for Mathematical Modeling and Computer Simulation, Bangalore; Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune, and the IITs are also involved in the research.
This scale of work, research and resources that the government is doing is not impossible to replicate for a private company and Skymet has provided an option. But whether it can last and make consistent predictions remains to be seen.