Metropolitan Air Quality and Weather Forecasting Services

Under the MoES Programmes “Atmospheric, Climate Science and Services”, a core programme “System of Air quality Forecasting and Research (SAFAR)” (http://safar.tropmet.res.in/) has been indigenously conceived, developed and commissioned by IITM, Pune. SAFAR is operational in Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and soon will be made operational soon in Ahmedabad and provides site-specific detailed customized meteorological and air quality products and spreads awareness through large public display digital boards, News frames, toll-free telephones, SMS services, web portal and IVRS.

For Indian domain, a national network of “Modeling Air Pollution And Networking (MAPAN)” consisting of about 15 air quality and weather monitoring stations are setup all over India. MAPAN provides baseline data for broad input fields to regional air quality model for Indian domain, nested domain coarser resolution for SAFAR and investigate the role of anthropogenic versus long-range transport. The operational technology for air quality and automatic weather stations of SAFAR and MAPAN are sustainable against natural hazards as recently experienced during Hudhud cyclonic storms over Eastern coast (Vishakhapatnam).

This group continues to quantify the impact of chemical emissions on the distribution of trace gases regionally and also on other regions of the globe along with timing and location of long-range pollution transport events using 3-D global coupled modeling systems. Also, focuses on quantifying the impact of air quality on persistent winter fog formation, duration and dissipation in the Indo-Gangetic Plains including Delhi and variability of carboneous aerosols (black carbon and organic carbon) in glaciers.

In addition to achieving the aforementioned extensive developmental, operational and capacity buildings goals via SAFAR and MAPAN in accordance with mandate of sanctioned project objectives, data of air quality and weather parameters generated through these networks served the strategic hypotheses driven science plan which added significant dimension to the vision and mission of IITM and evidently reflected in terms of scientific publications in the refereed SCI Journals.

SYSTEM OF AIR QUALITY FORECASTING AND RESEARCH

SAFAR is a dedicated air quality information service for Indian Metropolitan Cities, developed to make India self sufficient in providing frontier research based scientific accredited robust air quality information in real time and its forecast.

National Certification:ISO 9001:2008 Accredited by Standard Certification Council-India

International Certification: World Meteorological Organization (United Nations) recognized

Air is a mixture of various gases, important for survival of human race and life on the Earth, in a fixed proportion it's a life supporting system, but if the composition of air alters then elevated concentration of certain trace gases can lead to detrimental effects on human health, environment and other form of life. In view of current scenario of air pollution problem, the Ministry of Earth sciences commissioned an ambitious project namely SAFAR, which has been conceived, developed and implemented by its constituent. Currently SAFAR is operational in three major metro cities of India viz. Delhi (Since 2010), Pune (Since 2013) and Mumbai (Since 2015). It is planned to expand it for Ahmedabad, Chennai and Kolkata in the current 5-yr plan period.

SAFAR system has integrated four scientific components: (1) Air Quality and weather monitoring; (2) Development of high resolution emission inventories (3) Developing Air Quality Forecasting Model (4) Translating data to information in public friendly format.

• SAFAR Observational Network: 10 air quality parameters and 6 weather parameters have been monitored round the clock at strategically selected 10 locations spread across city area which represents different microenvironments including industrial, residential, background/ cleaner, urban complex, agricultural zones, urban down town area etc.
• AIR QUALITY & WEATHER PARAMETERS OBSERVED & FORECASTED:
• PM2.5, PM10, O3, CO, NOx (NO+NO2), CO2, Black Carbon, Benzene, Toulene, and Xylene.
• UV-dose, Rainfall, Temperature, Humidity, Wind speed & direction.
• Emission Inventory Development: High resolution (1km *1km) emission inventories have been developed using GIS (Geographical Information System) based statistical model which keeps accounting of various air pollution sources within the city area including Biofuel & Fossil fuel burning in thermal power plants, industries, transport, residential, slum sector, windblown dust from paved and unpaved roads, emissions from crematories etc. This process is input for 3-D atmospheric chemistry transport models.
• Air Quality and Weather Forecasting Model:  Setting up state of the art Atmospheric Chemistry Transport Model (ACTM) to forecast the air quality of various pollutants along with weather parameters with inner domain of 1.67 km x 1.67 km resolution. High Performance Computer consist of multiprocessor with high storage capacity is used for running the ACTM which simulates forecast. 
• SAFAR Products- Translate Data to Information:
• AIR QUALITY: Current & 1-3 days’ advance forecast with associated health advisories in terms of Air Quality Index (*AQI)
• HARMFUL RADIATION : Severity of UV radiation with associated skin advisories in terms of UV Index (*UVI)
• WEATHER: Current & 1-3 days’ advance forecast
• EXTREME EVENTS: Alert for  extreme pollution event & weather event
• EMISSION SCENARIO: Identify air pollution hot spots at city level, useful for mitigation planning.
• Public interface & dissemination tools:
  

  SAFAR-Master: One stop shop to know air quality information for all SAFAR Metropolis in the country on digital media at one place located in IITM, Pune .

  All the raw data monitored at various locations is transferred to SAFAR –Master, a Digital Control Centre of SAFAR from where after rigorous quality assurance and quality checks data is converted to useful information products and disseminated to maximum stakeholders through following dissemination tools