Air Office Commanding in Chief of Training Command, Air Marshal SRK Nair today exhorted the aviation meteorologist to examine weather elements critically and analyse comprehensively as to how they affected flight.

Even though Indian Air Force (IAF) is modernising with induction of latest aircraft and weapon systems, these systems are weather sensitive, Nair said.

To exploit their full operational capabilities they need to be effective with accurate prediction of weather and to sustain Air Force in such a state of readiness requires all the variable to fall in place precisely, Nair said.

He was speaking after inaugurating a 12-day National seminar on meteorology on Observational and Computational Tool for Nowcasting (OBSCON) at Air Force Administrative College (AFAC) here, in association with Bharathiar University.

‘Nowcasting’, refers to Short range weather forecasting in the fields of Meteorology, has become a challenging task for the forecasters due to high variability in weather.

With the variability of sensitive observational platforms and computational tools there is a significant scope of possibilities in this field.

The seminar aims to introduce and expose the participants to the realms of Nowcasting, during which participants would also be exposed to the basics of meteorological satellites, RADAR, lightning detection systems, it said.

The workshop is being attended by several participants from various National Universities, Research Organisations and institutions from across the country such as the Indian Meteorological Department, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Bharathiar University, IITs, ISRO apart from the Indian Air Force (IAF).

With the increase in civil aviation in India and elsewhere the impetus on mitigating the ill effects of any aviation related weather hazard is gaining importance, AFAC Commandant VPS Rana said.

OBSCON-2017 will enable the participants not only to understand the subject but also in effectively contributing towards better forecast solution, he said.