The country’s top weather research organisations and oil production departments have decided to collaborate to come out with an ‘impact model’ which will provide an ‘accurate early warning system’ for the benefit of the off-shore exploration and production industries and safety of workers on both the east and west coasts ,including the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
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The Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) located here and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) have signed a pact with the Director General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) and the Oil Industry Safety Directorate (OISD) of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas recently with the ‘endorsement’ of Directorate General of Shipping and Indian Coastal Guard.
The agreement is to provide a short and long term baseline environmental information for the operational areas of exploration and production activities, improve the quality of weather and ocean forecasting system to ensure smooth and safe operations for the off-shore activities, informed senior scientists.
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The offshore industry has 20 installations — fixed and manned, and operates a fleet of drilling and workover rigs at any point of time in various oil fields in both east and west coast both Arabian sea and Bay of Bengal. These rigs will share real-time observational data with INCOIS and IMD for better monitoring of the ocean state and modalities will be worked for an “integrated single point of dissemination cyclone related actionable inputs”, they said.
A joint monitoring group with officials and scientists drawn from the DGH, OSID, IMD and INCOIS will study the new model to provide ‘cyclone special forecasting services’ as the government intends to go for more off-shore surveys, exploration and development activities for enhanced energy security in the exclusive economic zone or EEZ.
While the IMD will maintain a daily watch on the state of ocean, during cyclones it will be providing a weekly extended range outlook indicating possible formation of depressions with five days notice integrating the INCOIS data of waves, currents and so on.
The cyclone track forecasts for offshore activities will be from the first alert of depression till the landfall with four bulletins daily within a six-hour interval valid for the next 72 hours to be issued at 8.30 a.m., 2.30 p.m., 8.30 p.m. and 2.30 a.m. This could go up to eight bulletins a day in case of a cyclone with additional bulletins at 5.30 a.m., 11.30 a.m., 5.30 p.m., and 11.30 p.m. valid for the next 120 hours.
INCOIS and IMD are expected to provide information of wind speed, direction and gust, current speed and direction, significant wavelength periods, precipitation, temperature, visibility, temperature and atmospheric pressure in the detailed bulletin, informed senior INCOIS senior scientist and group director T.M Balakrishnan Nair.