JICA to strengthen weather forecasting and warning issuance in Sri Lanka

JICA Sri Lanka and Department of Meteorology have launched a project called “Project for Capacity Building of Meteorological Observation, Weather Forecasting and Warning Issuance by Utilization of Weather Radars” to streamline the current whether forecasting system in more user friendly manner.

Under this project, JICA is providing technical expertise such as dispatching Japanese experts with necessary equipment to streamline the current typical weather forecast dissemination mode in Sri Lanka, whereas, general public of Sri Lanka will be able to receive the real time weather information with geographical map into the smart phones through a simple Mobile Application.

This is an exciting experience for the general public to observe the real time weather information, which will help them carry out day to day life and understand the risk of any possible weather hazards due to bad weather conditions.

This advanced system will be available for Sri Lankan people with the establishment of proposed two Weather Radars which will be setup at Puttalam and Pothuvil under JICA grant aid project, that costs approx. LKR 4,412 billion (2.503 billion yen). The Weather Radar is the latest technology to gather very accurate weather information to be disseminated on real time weather forecasting.

The project also aims to support capacity building of meteorological staff in the department by providing technical training in Japan especially for operation and maintenance of Weather Radar technology and state of the art technology for weather forecasting.

Record of discussion for the four year (2022 ~2025) project was signed on 24 Nov 2021 by Yamada Tetsuya, Chief Representative of JICA Sri Lanka and Athula Karunanayake, the Director General of Dept. of Meteorology in Colombo.

“Our prime objective and expectation of this project is to strengthen the weather forecasting facility of the Dept of Meteorology in order to minimise the loss of economic damages in the country and eliminate loss of human life due to natural disasters”, said Yamada at the launching of the project. Further, he emphasizes that, “no one can stop the natural disasters, but proper management practices and taking necessary mitigation measures for disaster risk reduction such as disseminating real weather information at the right time is the most appropriate way of preventing damages by natural disasters”.