Context

• The Ministry of Earth Sciences launched a mobile application ‘Mausam’ for India Meteorological Department (IMD) in order to enable users to track weather updates among other features, to enhance forecast as well as warning services of the government.

About the Mausam App:

• The app ‘Mausam’ has been designed and developed jointly by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM).
• The Earth Sciences Ministry launched the app on IMD’s Foundation Day celebrations on July 27, 2020.
• The Mobile app has been dedicated to the general public and is designed to communicate the forecasts and weather information in a lucid manner.
• Apart from the weather forecasts, users will also be able to access the radar images and will be proactively warned of impending weather events.
• A mobile app is an important tool for the dissemination of weather information and warnings in a user-friendly and attractive manner.

Features available on the app:

• Nowcast- It will showcase a three-hourly warning of localized weather phenomenon and their intensity issued for districts of India and for about 800 stations. In case of serious weather, its impact also will be included in the warning.
• Current Weather- Under this, data on the humidity, current temperature, direction, and wind speed for 200 cities will be updated 8 times a day. Information on sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset will also be provided.
• City Forecast- The app will provide the information on the past 24 hours and the 7 days forecasts of weather conditions in around 450 cities.
• Warnings- The app will also issue alerts twice a day for all the districts for the next 5 days in colour code (Orange, Red, and Yellow), in order to warn the citizens of dangerous weather. Red colour code will be the most dangerous category which will urge the authorities to take action, orange colour code will prompt the authorities and public to be on alert and yellow code will prompt the authorities and the public to keep themselves updated.
• Radar Products- The latest station wise radar products will be updated every 10 minutes.