IMD’s new AI weather forecasts will tell farmers when it will rain within a 1-km area
India’s weather service has launched AI-based forecasting tools for rain-fed agriculture, including a pilot in Uttar Pradesh that can generate rainfall forecasts at 1-kilometre resolution up to 10 days ahead.
The India Meteorological Department has launched two new artificial-intelligence weather products aimed at the country’s core monsoon regions, where farming depends heavily on rainfall. According to the report, this is the first time the IMD has incorporated AI guidance so extensively into its operational forecasting services, and the tools are set to start being used during the current monsoon season.
One product was developed by the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting and is being piloted in Uttar Pradesh. Its main feature is a spatial resolution of up to 1 kilometre, meaning rainfall forecasts can be generated for each 1-km geographical area rather than for much broader zones. Earth Sciences Secretary M. Ravichandran said the system combines data from a dense network of automatic rain gauges and automatic weather stations with satellite and Doppler weather-radar information, then uses AI-based downscaling to produce forecasts up to 10 days ahead.
Earth Sciences Minister Jitendra Singh said the service should help farmers make more informed local decisions on sowing dates, seed choice, irrigation, crop protection and harvest planning. The pilot begins in Uttar Pradesh, but the ministry said it is intended to expand to other regions because increasing weather variability and extreme events are raising the value of more precise forecasts.
A second AI-driven product has been developed by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune. That system is designed to track how the monsoon advances across the country with district-level detail. Ravichandran said the IMD had earlier communicated monsoon progress over larger geographical areas, but will now be able to issue updates at district level so farmers can prepare earlier. Those updates are scheduled to be released every Wednesday.
In the first phase, the new products will serve 3,196 blocks and sub-districts across 16 states and one union territory. India has more than 750 districts overall, and the chosen areas are mainly rain-fed regions where better rainfall forecasting is considered most urgent. Weather scientists quoted in the report said the tools should support not only agriculture, but also water-resource management and disaster management as the monsoon season unfolds.