SkyCast
1. SkyCast
Why In News:
The Ministry of Earth Sciences recently achieved a major landmark in clean, weather-smart aviation infrastructure by deploying India’s first indigenous "SkyCast" system to combat intense disruptions caused by fog and turbulence.
With the activation of this integrated facility, India has become only the 19th country in the world to deploy such high-end aviation remote sensing tech.
Prelims Ready Notes:
India’s first "SkyCast" system was formally inaugurated in May 2026 at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in New Delhi.
The second facility is scheduled for installation at the upcoming Jewar Airport.
The advanced facility has been conceptualized and deployed under the Government of India’s flagship "Mission Mausam" initiative.
SkyCast is a state-of-the-art integrated atmospheric remote sensing system designed to provide real-time weather intelligence and short-term advance alerts (nowcasting windows of ~3 hours) to aircrew, pilots, and air traffic managers.
The system combines multiple specialized atmospheric monitoring instruments into a single framework to track the atmosphere up to a vertical altitude of nearly 3 kilometers:
Radar Wind Profiler & SODAR continuously measures wind speed, wind direction, turbulence, and vertical boundary-layer dynamics crucial for landing profiles.
Ground-based Fog Aerosol Spectrometer (GFAS) analyzes fog droplets and monitors how urban pollution particles interact with localized moisture to form fog.
CL61 Lidar-based Ceilometer continuously monitors the vertical density and formation structure of fog layers.
Microwave Radiometer measures real-time temperature and moisture profiles.
The framework is built upon operational data and insights derived from the Winter Fog Experiment (WiFEX), which was jointly launched at the Delhi Airport by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) in 2015.