Can better weather forecasts help cool inflation? India is betting on it

In a country where a failed forecast can mean failed crops, and heavy rains in the wrong place can upend lives, getting the weather right isn’t just a matter of convenience — it’s a matter of national importance. India has now taken a major step in this direction with the launch of the Bharat Forecasting System (BFS), the world’s most detailed global weather model.It processes vast amounts of global data and uses advanced simulations to predict what the weather might look like over every 6 km x 6 km patch of land — roughly the size of a cluster of villages. This is a huge improvement over previous models, which only offered forecasts at a 12 km resolution. For a country as vast and varied as India, that difference is crucial.Supercomputers driving the changeThe IMD’s new platform has been developed by scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) by using the country’s customised version of the Global Forecast System (GFS), and sharpening it using a new grid structure that divides the globe into triangles. This approach enables it to make localised predictions.At the heart of this forecasting revolution is a supercomputer named Arka. Installed at IITM in Pune, Arka is not just powerful — it’s fast. The machine can perform 11.77 petaflops, or over 11 million billion calculations per second. It also has 33 petabytes of storage, enough to hold millions of high-definition movies.Why does this matter? Because weather forecasting is like solving an extremely complex puzzle that changes every few minutes. Arka can crunch this massive data in just four hours. Its predecessor, Pratyush, took about 10 hours to do the same job. This speed means faster, more timely forecasts.The BFS was made possible by this supercomputing leap. Scientists at IITM, including lead researcher Parthasarathy Mukhopadhyay, developed a new way of structuring the forecast grid. Instead of using squares, they now use triangles to divide the globe, making predictions more precise.Outperforming global competitionThe US's Global Forecast System and Europe’s Integrated Forecast System operate at resolutions of 9 to 14 km. BFS operates at 6 km.This makes BFS the most detailed global numerical weather model in the world. It offers a higher level of clarity, especially important for tropical countries like India, where weather can change rapidly over short distances.According to M Ravichandran from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, BFS offers forecasts over the entire tropical belt, from 30 degrees South to 30 degrees North. This fully covers India’s landmass, which lies between 8.4 and 37.6 degrees north.This is especially important because predicting tropical rainfall remains notoriously tricky. In temperate zones like North America or Europe, large-scale systems dominate the weather. In the tropics, smaller, local patterns often drive rain — and these are harder to track and model.Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Director General of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), explained at the BFS launch that rainfall will be the main focus of the system. “We will focus on all weather parameters, with rain being the key,” he said. Accurate rain forecasts can help farmers make critical decisions about sowing and harvesting. They can also help authorities manage floods and other weather-related disasters more effectively.Food security at its coreIn India, the weather directly affects what goes on your plate, and an unexpected change can damage crops and send food prices soaring.In fact, extreme weather is already affecting food security. According to the government’s Economic Survey, more agricultural land was damaged by extreme weather in 2024 than in the two years before that. Heatwaves have also become more frequent, occurring on 18% of days between 2022 and 2024, up from just 5% during 2020-2021.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has also been closely watching these changes. Its monthly bulletin flagged weather anomalies as a threat to price stability. Vegetable prices, in particular, are vulnerable to sudden heatwaves or unseasonal rain.The RBI has called for quicker development of temperature-resistant crop varieties as well as stressed the importance of early warnings and better planning. For decades, India relied on foreign models to make weather predictions and then adapted them locally. With BFS, the country is taking control of the entire chain — from data collection to forecast generation.If it delivers on its promise, the BFS won’t just tell us when it’s going to rain — it will help decide what we grow, where we build, and how we live.