SAARC STORM
The SAARC STORM is a coordinated field programme for Severe Thunderstorm Observations and Regional Modeling (STORM) over the SAARC region. It was originally conceived for understanding the Severe Thunderstorms known as “Kal Baisakhi” or Nor’westers that affect the West Bengal and Northeastern parts of India during the pre-monsoon season. The programme was initiated by the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India in 2005. Two Pilot Experiments were conducted in 2006 and 2007 as a multi-institutional programme under its supervision covering the West Bengal and Northeastern parts of India. However, the Weather knows no political boundaries. The Nor’westers affect not only the Indian region, but-are also most-severe over Bangladesh, southern .plains of
  
Nepal and Bhutan. Thanks are due to many Indian scientists for their vision, which led to expansion of the STORM programme over the 4 countries under the SAARC umbrella. Accordingly, a proposal was submitted to the 14th Governing Board (GB) meeting of SMRC held in November 2008. The GB approved the STORM programme for conducting the experiment jointly with India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan during the pre-monsoon seasons (April-May) of 2009-2012. The GB also recommended that all the SAARC countries may participate in the programme in phases. Subsequently, the Programme was endorsed by the SAARC Council of Ministers (Colombo 27-28 February 2009) as recommended by the SAARC Standing Committee and the SAARC Programme Committee respectively.
strom2
  
strom1

Fig. 1: Proposed region for coordinated field experiment with India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan for the study of Nor’westers.

Accordingly, in the 1st phase, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal started a joint programme focusing on Nor’westers. In order to coordinate this programme, an International Program Committee (IPC) comprising members from the four countries has been constituted to coordinate the international component of the STORM programme. The 1st meeting of the IPC held at IMD, Delhi during 13-14 April 2009 recommended that the STORM programme be renamed as SAARC STORM, and a Pilot field experiment be conducted in a coordinated way with the four countries. Considering that the thunderstorms occur at spatial scale ranging from a few kilometers to a couple of 100 kilometers, the IPC also recommended that a mesonet of AWS may be setup over Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan in a similar way as done over West Bengal and the northeastern parts of India for intensive observations. The proposed meso-net for the coordinated experiment is illustrated in Fig. 1.

As per the recommendation, a Pilot experiment was conducted during 1-31 May 2009 to collect intensive field observations -in the four countries -with -existing
 

stations- in -a -coordinated -way. --Several -Intensive Observation Periods (IOP) were declared during the outbreaks of thunderstorms. A DVD containing observations collected during the Pilot field experiment 2009 has been made, and formally released by the Chairman, GB during its 15th meeting held at SMRC on 26-27 October 2009. The DVD has been distributed to all the member states for future research by the scientific community in this field.

Based on the recommendations of the IPC, a formal request was submitted to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for providing extra equipments such as 50 Automatic Weather Stations (AWS), 3 GPS-sondes and 1 Doppler Weather Radar (DWR) for installation in the data sparse region. The Government of India has approved the proposal submitted to ISRO. This was appreciated and acknowledged by the 8th meeting of the SAARC Environment Ministers held at New Delhi during 20-21 October, 2009. The Ministers appreciated the plan of SMRC to set up a network of weather stations to monitor thunderstorms, across the Member States. They directed that the deployment of this network across other Member States also be accelerated.