Lok Sabha Question: Bharat Forecast System (BharatFS) for high-resolution real-time weather prediction
India’s Bharat Forecast System uses a 6 km grid and new supercomputing facilities for real-time, localised weather prediction
- The Ministry of Earth Sciences said BharatFS now supports real-time weather prediction at high resolution.
- The Ministry of Earth Sciences said BharatFS can generate more localised forecasts for a cluster of panchayats or villages.
- The Ministry of Earth Sciences said Arka at IITM-Pune and Arunika at NCMRWF-Noida reduced runtime enough for real-time use.
The Ministry of Earth Sciences has said that the Bharat Forecast System (BharatFS) now enables real-time weather prediction at 6 km horizontal resolution. The update matters because higher-resolution forecasting can capture local weather features better than earlier global models and can support district- and village-cluster-level advisories.
What changed
According to the Ministry of Earth Sciences, BharatFS uses a newly implemented Triangular Cubic Octahedral (TCo) dynamical grid. The Ministry said this grid allows the model to work at a finer scale than its predecessor, GFS T1534, which was around 12 km resolution, and finer than many global operational models that run at about 9–14 km.
UPSC can ask about high-resolution numerical weather prediction, the role of supercomputing in weather services, and the benefits of localised forecasts for agriculture and disaster response. A Mains question can also test whether indigenous climate and weather infrastructure improves strategic autonomy and service delivery.
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