India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Monday has signed an agreement with IIT Bombay in order to work together for developing climate solutions for the stakeholders at village, city, and district levels through user-friendly weather forecasting applications.

The partnership is expected to yield climate forecast and information-based smart applications for different sectors such as agriculture, farming and irrigation, health, etc. using technologies such as AI and ML, etc, meteorological aviation, observational and instrumentation applications and climate change policy information, and human resource development.

"Some of the important outcomes of this collaboration expected are development of sensors and drone-based Smart Monitoring System, climate-smart agriculture technology for water and food security, intelligent and automated early warning systems, climate and health, smart power grid management, wind energy and heat wave forecasts," an official said.

The IIT Bombay said it aims to establish a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Climate Services and Solutions within its Interdisciplinary Program in Climate Studies (IDPCS) that will leverage the expertise of its students and faculty members to conduct solution-oriented research to help mitigate climate change.

The agreement coincided with the 10-year completion of the IDPCS that was set up in 2012 with major financial support from the Department of Science and Technology.

The agreement was signed by K.S. Hosalikar, who heads IMD's Climate Research and Services at Pune, and Professor Milind Atrey, who is Dean, Research and Development, at IIT Bombay.

Secretary, Earth Sciences M. Ravichandran said: "IDPCS is a very good initiative by IIT Bombay as it is important for studies of climate science. Science itself is interdisciplinary as it involves mathematics, engineering solutions, and social sciences amongst other disciplines and these are required to understand the discipline of climate studies as well."