Session 1D: Inaugural Lectures by Fellows/Associates

Mitali Mukerji

The Bharat forecast system: An indigenous km-scale model to improve monsoon extreme precipitation deadlock

The prediction of Indian monsoon rainfall variability, affecting a country with a population of billions, remained one of the major challenges of the numerical weather prediction (NWP) community. While in recent years, there has been a significant improvement in the prediction of the synoptic scale transients (such as monsoon depression, cyclones etc.) associated with the monsoon circulation, the intricacies of rainfall variability remained a challenge. Here, an attempt is made to develop a global km-scale model using a dynamic core of a cubic octahedral grid that provides a higher resolution of 6.5 km over the global tropics. This high resolution model has been developed to resolve the monsoon convection. Reforecasts with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology's (IITM) High-Resolution Global Forecast Model (HGFM) have been run daily from June through September 2022. HGFM has a wavenumber truncation of 1534 in the cubic octahedral grid. The monsoon events have been predicted with a 10 d lead time. HGFM is compared to the operational Global Forecast System (GFS) T1534. While HGFM provides skills comparable to GFS, it shows better skills for higher precipitation thresholds. After thorough evaluation of the model, it was handed over to India Meteorological Department on 26th May 2025 as a completely “Make in India” model with a given name as “Bharat Forecast System”.