Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) urgently needs massive improvements in getting accuracy and lead time for weather forecasts and warnings system as it has been unable to achieve accuracy in hydrological forecasts and warnings-improved climate information, it is learnt.
According to latest evaluation documents, copy available with Pakistan Today, present capability of PMD only allows it to generate weather and hydrological forecasts for 1-2 days and an outlook for 3-5 days. ”This does not respond to the needs of stakeholders who require information from PMD for short-term operations as well as medium to long-term planning’ the documents remark.
The evaluation documents highlighted that PMD needed substantial improvement in its advisory services made available to user departments and farmers besides increase in satisfaction of user departments and target communities that the on time available information, corresponds to their needs and was actionable.
The documents underlined to take immediate steps for improving the performance of PMD in line with international practices, through investment in strengthening institutional setup and building capacity of human resources at the PMD.
The documents stressed the need for urgent interventions to lead in improved hydro-meteorological information and services, strengthened forecasting and early warning systems, and improved dissemination of weather, climate and hydrological information to end-users.
The documents maintained that modernisation of the observation infrastructure, data management systems and forecasting was the basic need for PMD.
The evaluation documents focussed that technical modernisation of the observation networks including modernisation of PMD data management; ii) communication and IT system; iii) Improvement of the weather forecasting process was direly needed.
The documents further suggested the improvements needed including numerical weather prediction system, focusing on equipment; iii) software up gradation.
The documents suggested that PMD needed great improvement of its hydrological forecasting process, including flood modeling system at WAPDA and PIDs; v) Expansion and refurbishment of PMD facilities and offices; vi) Modernization of the seismic monitoring and tsunami warning systems, and vii) Modernization of the meteo-oceanographic monitoring system and enhancement of the PMD Service Delivery & Building Partnerships with the Private Sector.
The documents further mentioned that performance for delivery needed far more accurate, timely and user-friendly products and services to users and decision-makers across a wide range of sectors. The modernisation of hydro-meteorological and climate services will bring cross-cutting socioeconomic benefits across many sectors and user departments. Different stakeholders and users have different requirements for hydro-meteorological data, information, and services on all time scales (from very short to medium to long-range) in a wide range of sectors in Pakistan. The current meteorological and hydro-logical services have limited capacity and capability to provide quantitative information to guide timely decision making.