Delhi airport has set up an integrated weather intelligence system that has the capability to detect and provide real-time alerts for fog, turbulence and other critical aviation hazards. Delhi airport handles over 1,300 flight movements daily.
Union Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Dr. Jitendra Singh on Friday inaugurated India’s first “SkyCast” aviation weather monitoring system at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in New Delhi, saying the country has entered a new era of “fog-free, weather-smart aviation”.
Developed under the Centre’s “Mission Mausam” initiative, the advanced integrated atmospheric monitoring system is designed to provide real-time weather intelligence to pilots, airlines and airport operators, helping reduce flight delays, diversions and cancellations caused by fog, turbulence and poor visibility.
With the launch of SkyCast, India has become the 19th country in the world to deploy such an integrated aviation weather monitoring system, the minister said. He added that the next SkyCast facility will be established at Jewar Airport in Uttar Pradesh, followed by expansion to other airports across the country.
The inauguration took place at IGI Airport in the presence of senior officials from the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), India Meteorological Department (IMD), Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), GMR and representatives from the aviation sector.
Addressing the gathering, Jitendra Singh said the system would significantly improve aviation safety and operational efficiency by delivering advance weather alerts to aircrew and pilots, even within short forecasting windows of around three hours.
He said passengers could expect fewer weather-related disruptions in the future as the system would help airlines and pilots take informed decisions regarding take-offs and landings during adverse weather conditions.
Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), which operates the airport, said the system enables continuous, real-time monitoring of critical atmospheric parameters, including temperature and humidity profiles, water vapour density, cloud liquid water content, wind speed and direction, vertical wind structures, and near-surface high-resolution wind observations.
The system combines a Radar Wind Profiler (RWP), Microwave Profiling Radiometer (MPR), SODAR (Sonic Detection and Ranging), and Automated Weather Stations (AWS) to deliver high-resolution wind and thermodynamic profiling of the atmosphere. Skycast can assess atmospheric conditions from the surface up to nearly 10 kilometres altitude for thermodynamic profiling and several kilometres for wind observations.
"The system detects and provides real-time alerts for critical aviation hazards including wind shear, fog, inversions, low-level jets, icing, and turbulence. It also supports outputs for the Integrated Wind Shear Alerting System (IWAS), convective initiation forecasts, fog evolution trends, and short-term operational nowcasts updated every five minutes,", the officials said.
Similar advanced atmospheric profiling and aviation weather intelligence systems are deployed at Hong Kong, Heathrow (UK), John F Kennedy (US) and Singapore Changi airports as well as at NASA and Cape Canaveral launch facilities for aviation and launch weather monitoring, they said.
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