CHANDIGARH: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is going to deploy nine Doppler radars across three Himalayan states including Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, said K J Ramesh , director general at IMD, who was at Panjab University on Wednesday. The Doppler radars would monitor severe weather conditions. Ramesh was talking on the sidelines of the user meet on Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa at Panjab University.“We have 27 working Doppler radars in the country and have taken out a tender to deploy three radars each in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. These will be installed within a year to improve the weather monitoring in these states,” said Ramesh. Talking about the requirement of the doppler radar, he said around 60 radars are required in the plains. However, he said infrastructure will be required to be taken care of before creating Doppler radar network.Referring to the summer season this year, Ramesh said, “This year, north-west India and north India would be around 1 degree warmer than the last year. Owing to daily predictions of heat wave we could reduce the mortality and morbidity rate last year. In 2015, around 2,600 deaths occurred due to heat wave. However, the number reduced to 200 last year. Cities like Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar and Hyderabad came up with action plans to tackle heat wave.” Commenting on intervention of the state governments for tackling heat-wave conditions, Ramesh added that state governments like Telangana, Karnataka and Maharashtra devised their strategies to deal with heat wave and some changed office timings. The timings were changed in such a manner that the people were lesser exposed to the heat waves.

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