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IMD's AI-Based Forecasting System for Precision Agriculture and Water Management

Wednesday, May 13, 2026
5 min read
IMD's AI-Based Forecasting System for Precision Agriculture and Water Management

This season, the India Meteorological Department, or IMD , is stepping up. It’s not just about tracking where the monsoon is moving across the country anymore. They’re going to be issuing forecasts and alerts directly to farmers, down to the block level, across as many as sixteen states. The whole point is to help them plan their sowing better.

They just rolled out this new AI-based forecasting system . It’s a big deal, developed with help from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting. They already ran a couple of successful trials. The four-month monsoon season kicks off in June, starting with Kerala, and it’s supposed to cover the entire country by July 8th.

Normally, the monsoon moves based on old data—the 1971 to 2019 records. But moving it inside each state, especially at the block level? That’s way harder to track. It’s a massive gap. Not just for the farmers, obviously, but for the local water management folks too. That’s what this new system is trying to fix.

Dr M Ravichandran, the Secretary for Earth Sciences, said they’ll now provide those detailed district-level updates on the monsoon’s progress. The first phase covers fifteen states and a Union Territory. They got good results there. But they plan to spread it out slowly as the observational network grows.

The system itself uses a mix—numerical weather prediction models jammed together with AI-based data analysis . It’s IMD’s big push for super-local, high-resolution weather predictions. Farmers in those sixteen states and roughly three thousand sub-districts will get probabilistic forecasts for the next four weeks.

Things are changing fast.

Meanwhile, the weather department is also doing something specific for Uttar Pradesh. They’re starting to provide really detailed rainfall forecasts for that state. The MeT built another AI system there, using all that dense weather observation data they have. It generates forecasts at one kilometer resolution, looking ahead up to ten days. It pulls everything together—weather stations, Doppler radars, satellites, the models—and uses AI to downscale it, making the alerts much more localized.

The global models IMD runs right now, they give forecasts at twelve point five kilometers or three to four kilometers resolution. Hourly updates, sure. Useful for broad weather, maybe. But they just can’t grab those specific local rainfall patterns needed for precision farming or whatever localized action is needed.

That’s where the AI comes in. Mrityunjay Mohapatra, the IMD chief, explained it. The AI is going to take those 12.5 km forecasts and refine them. It’ll jump down to four kilometers, then one kilometer resolution. That makes the data way more useful for planning locally. They’re sharing these forecasts almost in real time, through APIs, available on the NCMRWF websites.

Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said this whole launch marks a real shift. It’s moving away from just predicting the weather towards something about impact and decision support. He pointed out that with changing climate patterns and these extreme weather events, precise, timely forecasting isn’t just nice to have; it’s essential.

The AI-enabled monsoon system will give probabilistic forecasts for how the monsoon is progressing, every Wednesday, looking up to four weeks out. This is going to help agriculture, water resources, renewable energy, urban planning, disaster management—everything. It lets farmers make decisions based on real likelihoods, not just general guesses.

Written by Gree News Team — Senior Editorial Board

Gree News Team covers international news and global affairs at Gree News. Our collective of senior editors is dedicated to providing independent, accurate, and responsible journalism for a global audience.

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