LAHORE, Aug 26: The federal government has approved the installation of a Rs200 million sophisticated 10cm Doppler weather radar at Mangla for 'accurate quantitative' flood forecasting in the river Jhelum and rain measurement in its catchments in India.
The federal government has already approved the replacement of the 30-year old radar in Sialkot with another 'state of the art' non-Doppler Rs70 million radar having a radius of 250km for the quantitative flood forecasting in the Chenab and precipitation measurement over its catchments in held Kashmir and India.
International bids for the radar in Sialkot would be invited by the end of this month and for Mangla in a month. They were likely to be installed by June 2005, official sources informed Dawn on Thursday.
Doppler radars are used all over the world for their ability to continuously monitor weather systems, helping officials find out the convergence and divergence of air mass which is essential for detecting concentration of moisture resulting in cloud burst or heavy downpour over a specific area even before the rain starts.
They help gain more time for issuing an advance flood warning and eliminate chances of any false alert. Another quality is the three-dimensional images of cloud - measurement of its length, width and height- which is not possible with traditional radars.
One such radar is already functioning at the Lahore's Flood Forecasting Bureau of the Pakistan Meteorological Division which was installed with a Rs100 million Asian Development Bank assistance in 1997.
The flood forecasting centre feeds information to the entire country particularly during the monsoon flood season. Unlike the Doppler radars, the non-Doppler radars monitor rain and weather system in steps.
The new radars would be installed with the financial assistance of the Asian Development Bank, officials said. They said the new radar at Mangla would help protection of the Mangla Dam with accurate forecasting of the river flow and the amount of precipitation in its catchments in a radius of 450kms.
They said it would help avert 1992 like situation when the dam faced an immediate danger because of heavy rain in the catchments of the river Jhelum. It would help monitor rain and the river flow in the mountainous region and across the border in India and held Kashmir which otherwise was not possible.
The estimated Rs200 million would be spent on the purchase of the radar, construction of building for its installation and satellite networking with the radars in Lahore and Sialkot, the officials said.
They said the radar in Lahore was helping monitor flood generating depressions approaching Pakistan from the Bay of Bengal and India with its 450km radius capacity. The ADB was also giving Rs150 million for upgrading the radar in Lahore, increasing its validation for another 10 years, they said.
The new radar in Sialkot would add to the forecasting capacity of the country, replacing the existing radar which was donated to the country by some foreign country in 1970, they said.
