KARACHI: The monsoon system of low pressure entering lower Sindh from India is to bring as much rainfall as was experienced during the last couple of weeks in Karachi. The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) clarified on Tuesday that it had only said it feared urban flooding because of the city’s poor drainage system, and not because of too much rain as was mentioned on social media.

“The Met office has been dealing with panicky phone calls from citizens who learnt from someone’s post or tweet that we are to expect 150mm rain in the next 24 hours. Oh come on! We never said that. The maximum amount of rain in Karachi will be 50mm,” said Met chief and director Abdul Rashid.

He explained that the monsoon system moved into Pakistan from the east, which is India, and that during winter, the rains here came from the west as the clouds are formed over the Mediterranean Sea. “Actually, we are more interested in the direction the clouds or monsoon system are comes from. Where it is going is not our concern,” he said and laughed.

“The northern cities, Punjab and upper Sindh are already experiencing rain. Pakistan is to see a good monsoon this year, which means, yes, rains, but not every day. There will be moderate rain one day, then some drizzle the next day followed by some sun maybe and then rain again. This kind of weather is expected until Sept 15. This is unlike 2015 when monsoon was below normal here,” the Met chief said.

“Here so much funding is set aside for the cleaning of storm drains and gutters, which isn’t happening. So, since the city’s drainage system is clogged even moderate rain will result in flooding on the roads. We do our job, which is predicting the weather. Cleaning the drains is not our job. It is the city government’s responsibility. Everyone should do their work and there will be no problem.”

Weather predictions

What the Met office predicts isn’t always correct. Could this be because they lack the necessary tools for weather forecasts? The Met chief shakes his head. “If by forecasts you mean predicting the exact amount of rain, you also need to consider the size and population of Karachi. This sprawling city of 23 million people won’t always experience uniform rain in every area. If it is raining cats and dogs in Gulshan-i-Hadeed and only drizzling in Nazimabad while Defence and Clifton remain dry, it doesn’t mean that the Met office made a wrong prediction of the weather,” he said.

He added that all over the world weather predictions could not always be a hundred per cent precise. The same is the case with Pakistan. “When the atmospheric pressure and winds up there change, it happens so quickly, changing the situation entirely that sometimes even our estimates fall flat. It can happen anywhere. It is not because our instruments are not sophisticated enough or anything of the sort,” he said.

Pakistan also falls in the tropical region on the globe where the weather conditions can be rather erratic which makes it difficult to predict the weather.

Instruments and equipment

Studying all the weather perimeters includes measuring heat, observing the atmospheric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, visibility, cloud formations, humidity. And the met office claims to have most instruments to be able to do that such as anemometers, wind vanes, barometers, thermometers, rain gauges. They also have 96 observatories across Pakistan. The observations are reported to the forecasting office where the findings are plotted on the surface and upper air charts. Hydrogen gas balloons at the observatories also help in plotting trajectories for atmospheric readings.

There is just one thing that may be causing a bit of an issue currently — weather radars. The PMD has six to seven weather radars, which are getting a bit old, which in turn is making the availability of their spare parts a problem. The one in Karachi came here from Japan in 1991. One of its electronic cards needs replacing as it is preventing data from the radar to transfer directly to the met office computers. So it has to be done manually.

All the weather radars are here thanks to the Japanese International Cooperation Agency. The good news is that Japan will be gifting two new weather radars to Pakistan, one for Karachi and the other for Islamabad. Work on building a support system for these will begin in January 2017.

It also emerged that 98 per cent of equipment for the PMD is courtesy of Japan and just 2pc comes from the federal government. “Look, we are doing our best we can in our limited sources,” said Mr Rashid.

Pakistan also no longer has a weather satellite up there. But the met office said that they were managing very well as the Chinese and European satellites covered most of Pakistan with just a bit of Balochistan left out. The satellite pictures can also be viewed on the PMD website.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2016