Zubair Qureshi
With the support of the Government of Japan, Pakistan gets an advanced and enhanced weather surveillance system, a state-of -the art weather surveillance radar and the same technologies that are used in Japan.
Pakistan prone to natural disasters such as floods and landslides caused by heavy torrential rains, tropical cyclones, earthquakes and so on, experiences almost every year heavy damages due to floods triggered by rains during the monsoon season.
The Government of Japan has been assisting Pakistan proactively in the past particularly in the enhancement of weather surveillance capacity through Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) since 1980’s in order to mitigate the damage by flood.
Weather surveillance radars in Islamabad and in Karachi have already been put in place and a few others are planned to be constructed in Multan and in Sukkur, in cooperation with Japan. These radars will cover almost the whole of Pakistan.
In addition, in 2019 the Japanese government through JICA assisted in establishing the “Specialized Medium Range Weather Forecasting Center” in order to enhance not only the weather surveillance capacity, but also weather forecasting capability for Pakistan.
An officer from the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), while talking to Pakistan Observer said “Capacity of weather forecasting has been enhanced by various Japanese assistance. We can now get exact positioning information of clouds through high-resolution images as compared to previous weather surveillance systems.
