An overview of first Doppler Weather Radar inducted in the cyclone detection network of India Meteorological Department

Abstract

India Meteorological Department (IMD) maintains a wide network of radars for the detection and study of severe weather phenomena like cyclones, thunderstorms, gust front etc. and for deriving upper air wind profile.  To keep pace with the fast developments in the field of weather radar technology, IMD is gradually replacing its conventional radars with digital radars, a few of them with Doppler capabilities. An S-band Doppler Weather Radar (DWR) has been inducted into India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) Cyclone Detection Radar (CDR) network recently at Chennai as a replacement to the outlived analogue S-band radar  and is declared operational from 21 February 2002. Salient features, both hardware and software, of the radar are discussed in this article.