India’s geographical diversity and growing climate vulnerabilities place it squarely in the path of a wide array of natural hazards — most of them weather-related. From cyclones and floods to thunderstorms, lightning, and heat waves, the country faces year-round meteorological challenges that differ by region and season. In recent years, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and allied agencies have made major strides in improving early warning systems, especially for cyclones and heavy rainfall, often saving lives through timely forecasts.

Yet progress has been uneven. Systems for thunderstorm and lightning nowcasting, for example, are still developing, and the coverage of early warning systems for flash floods and heat waves lags behind. Experts warn that climate change is both intensifying and reshaping the nature of these hazards — expanding their geographic reach, increasing their frequency, and introducing unpredictable, compound effects that undermine traditional risk assessments. Despite the launch of Mission Mausam and the adoption of new technologies like artificial intelligence, India’s disaster warning system still struggles with gaps in data, last-mile communication, and institutional coordination.

Addressing these challenges will require not only technical upgrades and decentralised planning but also user-focused design, better risk modeling, and more transparent evaluation to ensure warnings are both received and acted upon — especially by the most vulnerable.

India and its natural hazards

Natural hazards are not new to India. The country experiences different types, although 80% of them are related to weather in the form of cyclones, heavy rains, floods, heat and cold waves, thunderstorms, and gusty or squally winds, Mrityunjay Mohapatra, director-general of the IMD, said. Their formation, seasonality, and locations vary. While heavy rainfall can and often do cause floods in most parts of the country during the monsoon season, thunderstorms can also result in heavy rains and floods in the pre-monsoon season over the northeastern States. Meanwhile, the southeast peninsula — especially Tamil Nadu and Puducherry — experiences floods due to heavy rain in the retreating northeast monsoon season after the rest of the country has been done with its share of the showers.

The hazards affect different regions differently. Thunderstorms are more hazardous over east and northeast India, followed by the south peninsular and northwest India, while heat and cold waves are more prevalent over the plains of northwest, eastern, and central India and the adjoining peninsular region. India’s east coast is more prone to cyclones than those on the west coast.

Weather watch: Meteorologists at the IMD Met Centre discuss the potential early onset of the southwest monsoon.
| Photo Credit:
NIRMAL HARINDRAN

India’s early warning systems

India has made notable progress in developing disaster early-warning systems (EWS), particularly for cyclones, heat and cold waves, and heavy rainfall, Mohapatra said. IMD’s cyclone forecasting recently resulted in zero human casualties, he pointed out. The accuracy of heavy rainfall warnings has also improved: States such as Maharashtra have adopted regional flash flood forecasting systems, exemplified by Mumbai’s iFLOWS, an integrated flood-warning system for the city.

Additionally, new forecasting tools have been deployed to support State-level heat action plans through impact-based early warnings for heat and cold waves. High-resolution mesoscale numerical models are also being used to predict thunderstorms, lightning, and related hazardous weather events.

The country’s ₹2,000-crore ‘Mission Mausam’ aims to strengthen its weather observation network, forecasting accuracy, and last-mile communication by expanding rainfall monitoring via 50 Doppler weather radars (DWRs), establishing 60 radiosonde stations, augmenting wind profilers, and improving weather prediction models with artificial intelligence and machine learning.

According to Mohapatra, while there has been about a 40-50% improvement in the forecasting accuracy of various severe weather events during the past decade compared to the one before, Mission Mausam aims to further improve forecast accuracy by 15% in the next five years.

EWS for cyclones “are the most mature”, originating as the first weather service in the1860s, even before the IMD was formed, Biswanath Dash, associate professor at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Hyderabad, who specialises in climate adaptation studies and disaster studies, said. EWS for floods is still evolving: he cited the example of India’s Central Water Commission long-standing flood forecasts service and added that the thunderstorm service is currently in a nowcasting framework.

There has also been better progress in warning services for heat waves, including in the form of a colour code for risk levels. Among the non-hydro-meteorological hazards, India has also developed a warning system for tsunamis, “although its problem is that it remains largely untested in the absence of a real tsunami occurrence,” Dash said.

All this said, India is yet to effectively evaluate the quality of its EWS services in the absence of a specific method to measure them. “A general approach is to link efficiency and quality with the number of human casualties,” according to Dash. For example, if fewer deaths occur in a cyclone, one draws the inference that the locals were better warned.

“In my view, like any other service, the quality of EWS services should be evaluated by the users, including the general people. It has not been given much attention.”

Gaps and challenges

Mohapatra also said “significant challenges persist in forecasting thunderstorms, lightning, and extreme rainfall events, which continue to cause substantial loss of life and property.”

The challenges include technical ones related to data gaps in remote locations, such as the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, and scientific limitations with respect to forecast lead-times for certain high-impact weather events such as lightning and localised heavy rainfall. Other hurdles include limitations with respect to models’ precision at local levels for hazards, last-mile connectivity of forecast information, and, sometimes, the perception of low-risk related to slow-onset disasters like heat waves, which, Mohapatra said, can reduce the effectiveness of EWS.

The coverage of the EWS network is also uneven: while the coastal States benefit from robust cyclone warning infrastructure, flash floods, urban flooding, and lightning still lack timely, localised alerts, says Vishwas Chitale, senior programme lead at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), New Delhi. For example, one CEEW analysis showed that approximately 66% of Indians are exposed to extreme flood events but only 33% of the exposed individuals are covered by a flood EWS.

To address these issues, the IMD has introduced a unified forecasting system to support anticipatory and early response actions by various stakeholders. The integrated system begins with a seasonal forecast at the start of the season, followed by a monthly outlook issued at the beginning of each month. This is further supplemented by an extended-range forecast updated every Thursday for the following four weeks, along with daily short- to medium-range forecasts covering the next seven days. The idea is that the daily dissemination of impact-based, colour-coded warnings will have the relevant authorities mount a timely response.

“Despite the technological advances, challenges such as data gaps and low public awareness continue to limit the overall effectiveness of EWS,” Mohapatra said.

“Even though we are transitioning towards impact-based forecasts and warnings, there is a long distance to go,” Dash said.

Indeed, in a research paper on the potential of impact-based forecast and warning services for hydro-meteorological hazards in India, published in the journal Natural Hazards in March 2024, Dash had called for changes including stronger risk-assessment modelling, clarity in institutional mandates, and the adoption of flexible governance frameworks.

For example, he argued that India needs a mechanism that allows warning agencies to come together in real-time with other stakeholders, including local authorities. Dash has also articulated a need to build trust through transparency in communication, conducting objective performance evaluations, and developing a scientific model “from the user requirement perspective, rather than top down”.

Compounding natural disasters

Climate change is reshaping the way natural disasters unfold in India, making them more intense, frequent, and unpredictable, posing serious challenges to the country’s EWS, Mohapatra said.

“The changing climate is expanding the geographic reach of disaster risk zones and making hazard prediction and preparedness more complex.” He continued: “the Arabian Sea, once less prone to cyclonic storms, [has been] witnessing a noticeable uptick in extremely severe cyclone activity in recent decades, since the 1990s.”

Rainfall patterns have shifted dramatically as well. Erratic and intense downpours are increasingly triggering flash floods across the country. Heat waves are lasting longer and reaching higher temperatures. It is not unheard of for several cities in northern and central India to have endured daytime readings above 45° C for consecutive days.

Meanwhile, “the warming atmosphere is holding more moisture, leading to stronger thunderstorms and a surge in lightning strikes, which arrive as a rare adverse impact during heat waves,” Mohapatra added. The States of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha in particular have reported sharp rises in lightning-related incidents.

Climate change is compounding the challenge by increasing the frequency and unpredictability of extreme weather events, “especially in non-traditional geographies,” Chitale said. A 2021 CEEW study found that 27 of 35 India’s States and Union Territories are currently vulnerable to extreme hydro-meteorological disasters and their compounding consequences. Notably, about 80% of India’s population resides in these vulnerable regions.

The report also discussed how more than 40% of districts in India are witnessing a “swapping trend”: i.e. flood-prone districts are facing droughts and traditionally drought-prone areas are facing more frequent floods.

“This highlights the dynamic nature of climate risks and the need for flexible, region-specific adaptation strategies,” Chitale said, alluding to the west coast’s need to be prepared for cyclones as much as the east coast needs to brace for heat waves.

“A different kind of challenge from climate change is on account of how we conduct hazard risk assessment,” Dash pointed out. Risk assessment is generally based on historical datasets, which form the basis of systematic formal hazard assessment and coverage under specific types of EWS.

“This approach is in question now when you factor in climate-change-induced weather phenomena,” Dash said. This is because, while historical data remains useful, it may not be a good indicator of how things will be under climate change: that is, climate change disconnects the future from the past. Dash used the example of the largely arid State of Rajasthan and its government having to contend with increasingly frequent floods of late.

A particularly important challenge on this front is in the integration of climate risk data across scales, according to Chitale. Local governments often lack access to granular climate and hazard data. The interoperability of forecasting systems across different sectors such as health, agriculture and transport, is also limited. “Outdated forecasting models, poor data accessibility, and lack of coordination across various government agencies hinder effective disaster response and resilience building,” he said.

“The capacity constraints in sub-national institutions and weak last-mile connectivity mean that even where warnings are issued, they may not reach the most vulnerable in time or in actionable formats,” Chitale added.

Resource gaps in EWS

Improving India’s disaster EWS requires a substantial commitment of financial, technical, and human resources, according to Mohapatra.

Despite the country’s significant investments in improving EWS as well as its strong technical foundation, India still needs the necessary technical infrastructure, including weather stations, real-time data access, and/or AI-driven forecasting systems to achieve location-specific EWS, Mohapatra added. There is also a need for better interoperability between systems to ensure a cohesive response to multiple hazards occurring at once.

Equally, while India has a strong core of trained meteorologists, hydrologists, and disaster management experts, and while community-based initiatives have made significant strides in engaging vulnerable populations, “such initiatives are not yet widespread and universally accessible.”

For Dash, an important underlying issue is that EWS is still conceptualised as a “single hazard leading to (at best) a few risks”. For example, heavy rainfall is understood as a single hazard that leads to flooding, a single risk, and that “a cyclone leads to trees being uprooted and low-lying areas being flooded”.

However, he continued, “as several recent disasters have shown, hazards themselves could be interacting, leading to multiple risks in more of a nonlinear relationship. We are yet to mount a mission [that helps us understand] multiple-hazards leading to multiple risks”.

While India has world-class meteorological capabilities, it should focus more on uniform capacity and scaling up at the State and district levels, in Chitale’s telling. The government should invest in real-time monitoring tools such as microsensors, and adopt emerging technologies such as Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing to enhance the accuracy and speed of early warnings.

India possesses the building blocks but must invest in scaling and decentralising systems, especially for climate-sensitive sectors like health, transport, and water. Stronger public-private partnerships and international collaboration can also help bridge these gaps, he added.

T.V. Padma is a science journalist in New Delhi.