Enhanced Precision in Predicting Intense Rainfall Events by India's Bharat Forecast System by 30%
India's homegrown weather forecasting system, Bharat Forecast System (BharatFS), is making waves in the realm of climate science, strengthening the country's position in the region and reducing dependency on foreign models.
Developed indigenously, BharatFS has significantly improved the accuracy of extreme heavy rainfall predictions by approximately 30% compared to earlier models. This improvement is largely due to the use of a novel Triangular Cubic Octahedral (TCo) dynamical grid, which enables a high horizontal resolution of 6 km. This resolution is double the spatial resolution of the previous GFS T1534 model (~12 km) and exceeds most global operational models (9–14 km).
The TCo grid focuses increased resolution over tropical regions, enhancing local weather feature capture, especially in complex terrains like the Western Ghats and Himalayas. This high-resolution grid allows BharatFS to deliver real-time forecasts enabled by India's new supercomputing infrastructure: Arka at IITM Pune and Arunika at NCMRWF Noida. These advancements have reduced forecast runtimes from about 12 hours to between 3 and 6 hours.
BharatFS provides forecasts at the cluster-of-panchayats level, making hyper-localized predictions accessible to farmers, water managers, and disaster response units for timely local action. This level of precision can help farmers optimise crop planning, irrigation schedules, and harvesting decisions based on precise local weather insights. Water managers may better regulate reservoirs during monsoons, reducing flood risk and mitigating drought impact via proactive management. Disaster response agencies gain enhanced preparedness for extreme rain and flood events, improving resilience and mitigation strategies.
On a global scale, BharatFS is the only weather prediction system currently operating at such a high resolution (6 km) for real-time forecasting, positioning India as a leader in high-resolution weather modeling. This model’s advancements can inform global weather services on efficient grid designs and computing strategies for improved extreme weather forecasting, especially in tropical and complex terrain zones.
BharatFS is part of the "Make in India" campaign and is expected to empower farmers, water management, and disaster response teams by utilising state-of-the-art technology and supercomputing breakthroughs. The development and implementation of BharatFS demonstrate India's commitment to advancing technological capabilities in the field of weather forecasting.
In addition to protecting lives and livelihoods, BharatFS demonstrates India's increasing capacity for scientific innovation. The system improves forecasting of extreme rainfall events by 30% for areas of India that depend on the monsoon. BharatFS allows India to provide meteorological assistance to other nations. The improvements in weather forecasting made by BharatFS could potentially mitigate the effects of extreme weather events, such as the deadly floods and landslides in Uttarakhand.
BharatFS was created by teams from the India Meteorological Department, NCMRWF-Noida, and IITM-Pune. During the monsoon season, water managers can reduce the risk of flooding by optimising reservoir operations with BharatFS. Global insured losses from natural disasters hit $80 billion in the first half of 2025. While not directly related to the article, this fact might be of interest to the reader.
In conclusion, BharatFS significantly advances India’s heavy rain forecast accuracy by 30%, enables highly localized and timely weather predictions, benefits agriculture and disaster management, and sets a pioneering example for high-resolution global weather modeling.
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