The Pakistan Meteorological Department, PMD, has decided to launch a $50 million project in cooperation with the World Bank to improve and advance its system by installing state-of-the-art radars and creating 300 new weather stations. Senior officials confirmed this news.
As per the Global Climate Risk Index, Pakistan is considered to be ranked as the 5th most vulnerable country to climate change, confronting extreme weather events like droughts, heat waves, and floods that massively impact the infrastructure and agriculture sector of Pakistan.
By keeping in mind this situation, the collaboration and work of PMD for providing weather forecasts and issuing public warnings to ensure protection, general awareness, and safety, this initiative has got greater significance, though it encounters restrictions as the majority of such systems depend heavily on manual observation methods.
The project of the World Bank is worth $50 million. Shahzaib Khan, the PMD director-general, claimed this in an exclusive interview. In the first phase, we are anticipating to spend $40 million. However, we are anticipating to spend the remaining $10 million as this is a three-year project.
He claimed that the project was ratified in September 2023, and after completing all the documentation, it was operationalized this week. Under the project, we are anticipating to have 300 automated weather stations. He claimed we are about to install five radars from the World Bank and merge observational data, satellite data, and radar data.
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We are installing the computers that have higher performance. Khan informed the network of weather stations is anticipated to be created within the next three years, believing it will make the PMD system massively more effective and efficient with a much higher rate of efficiency, accuracy, and improved forecasting ability.
We are anticipating to have 105 new automated weather stations in Balochistan 45 stations will be executed in Sindh, and 75 will be there in Pakistan, which will help increase our capacity of data collection, he claimed. The PMD official has given information that Pakistan currently has around 100 manual observatory weather stations all over the country but requires more as larger networks would massively increase the precision of weather forecasts. As per the World Meteorological Organization, every 40 kilometers should have an observation station, but we have not been capable of doing it in Pakistan now, he further claimed.
Khan claimed his organization will also consider installing five modern radars with different ranges to the most exclusive and advanced ones in Gwadar and Lahore. He also pointed out the PMDs are anticipated to get a high-performing computing component to integrate and process all kinds of data. PMD Director Dr. Zahid Ahmed Babar claimed the forecast system needed a robust network of weather observatories. We are working to invest in the observation system because the weather observation system not only consists of the observatories, it also constitutes the radars and the satellite images, he claimed.
Babar said the weather system relied upon the initial conditions which alter every three hours. He instructed the PMD experts to produce forecasts by visualizing and evaluating various models, eventually publishing the information in text form on the website. In the National Disaster Management Authority, Provincial Disaster Management Authorities and the District Management Authorities are then instructed about this information in text form, he claimed.