By Mihir R. Bhatt, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI), India

As the India Meteorological Department (IMD) celebrates 150 years of pioneering service worldwide, it stands at a critical juncture in its journey, warning from forecasting to enabling early action. The climate crisis is intensifying, and India faces growing risks from heatwaves, cyclones, floods, and droughts, to list a few. These risks are becoming more frequent, severe, interconnected, and cascading, being co-located in terms of origin to impact. IMD’s future lies in making its services not only more accurate but also more accessible, useful, usable, people-centric, and anticipatory.

In the face of a fast-changing climate, early warning is not a privilege—it is a right. India’s leadership through IMD shows that science, when guided by equity, can protect every life, in every corner, before disaster strikes.

Ten Priority Actions for the Way Ahead:

1. Accelerated Regional and Global Cooperation: Deepen robust collaboration with South Asian neighbours and Indian Ocean countries for shared data systems, capacity-building, and coordinated early warning dissemination to address transboundary climate risks to start with.
2. Sustained Last-Mile Connectivity and Local Action: Ensure early warnings reach vulnerable communities in local languages through mobile phones, community radios, social media, and trusted local networks. Engage NGOs, youth, and volunteers in outreach and response in a sustained manner, beyond events, to between events.

3. Transform Climate Resilience into Forecasting: Embed climate projections and risk scenarios into forecasting models at all levels and for all sectors to better anticipate long-term shifts in monsoon behaviour, extreme heat, and urban flooding.
4. Leverage Technology, AI, and Citizen Science: Use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and mobile-based data collection to enhance accuracy, engagement, and personalisation of forecasts, especially in underserved and data-scarce areas, at par and in synergy with science that citizens hold and use for centuries.
5. Universalise Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems (MHEWS): Strengthen integrated systems that provide alerts for combined hazards (e.g., cyclone-induced flooding and heatwaves), supported by synchronised operating procedures across sectors and levels of governance for all citizens for all times and at all locations.
6. Upscale Sector-Specific and Urban Forecasting: Tailor warnings for agriculture, health, energy, and city systems in favour of affected people and assets, both. Integrate forecasts into urban resilience strategies and infrastructure planning, especially in climate-vulnerable towns and cities.
7. Simultaneously Invest in Observational Infrastructure and Indigenous Innovation: Scale up weather stations, radar, satellite, and ocean buoys. Promote public-private partnerships and indigenous technology for cost-effective, scalable, and localised monitoring. Achieve such innovations with investments that are timely, substantial, and sustained.
8. Link Early Warning with Risk Financing and Early Action: Expand forecast-based financing tools and Early Action Protocols (EAPs) to enable humanitarian agencies and state actors to act before a disaster strikes to slow down, reduce, and, where possible, remove the negative impact.
9. Make Nature-Based Solutions Central: Connect forecasts to action by promoting green infrastructure, such as mangroves, urban tree canopies, and watershed restoration, as buffers that reduce disaster impacts and enhance community resilience, which in the end lead to re-naturing our own homes and our planet.
10. Institutionalise Learning Dialogues and Capacity Building: Establish national and regional platforms for co-creating people-centred early warning systems. Regularly and effectively engage civil society, media, academia, and local governments in learning and planning our joint future.

The next 5 years of progress must be defined by one goal: no one is left behind in the path of storms, floods, or heat. Let early warning be the bridge from science to survival, from data to dignity for loss to resilience.

From village to megacity, from ocean coasts to mountain ranges, early warnings must reach all. India’s example reminds the world that resilience begins not with reaction, but with readiness.

Conclusion:

The IMD of the future must do more than predict—it must empower. Its strength will lie not only in technological advances but in its ability to deliver accessible, timely, and actionable information to those who need it most. With inclusive partnerships, policy innovation, and bold investment, India can help the world in building anticipatory, climate-smart, and resilient early warning systems for all.