Cyclone Disaster Management in India: Forecasting, Warnings and Response

Cyclone Early Warning System in India: IMD and RSMC New Delhi

IMD as the Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre

The organisation that keeps track of cyclones in India is the India Meteorological Department, an agency of the Ministry of Earth Sciences. IMD is one of six centres, each a Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre (RSMC), that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recognises under a global system for monitoring tropical cyclones. Its centre at New Delhi, RSMC New Delhi, is responsible for the whole North Indian Ocean, which covers both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

The role grew in stages. In 1988 the Regional Meteorological Centre at New Delhi was redesignated as the RSMC for tropical cyclones and began issuing outlooks and advisories for the countries bordering the two seas. Since 2005 its area of responsibility has covered the entire North Indian Ocean.

RSMC New Delhi serves 13 member countries of the WMO/ESCAP Panel on Tropical Cyclones: Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It also sends cyclone advisories to Somalia. For these countries it issues a daily tropical weather outlook and, when a storm forms, tropical cyclone advisories, including advisories for international aviation. The same panel supplies the names of North Indian Ocean cyclones, and a new list has been in use since June 2020.

Three-Tier Cyclone Warning Organisation: CWD, ACWCs and CWCs

Inside India, cyclone warnings come from a three-tier organisation. At the apex, the Cyclone Warning Division (CWD) at IMD headquarters in New Delhi coordinates warning work across the country, advises the Government and also functions as RSMC New Delhi.

Below it are seven regional offices along the coast:

• Area Cyclone Warning Centres (ACWCs): Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata.
• Cyclone Warning Centres (CWCs): Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam, Thiruvananthapuram and Ahmedabad.

The youngest of these, the centre at Thiruvananthapuram, was set up in 2018. Each centre warns the coastal districts, ports and fishermen of its own stretch of coast, and its Director briefs the State's Chief Secretary personally while a storm approaches. The Forecasting Division at Pune also supervises and coordinates cyclone warning work.

Cyclone Monitoring: Satellites, Doppler Weather Radars and Ocean Buoys

Satellite Monitoring with INSAT‑3D, INSAT‑3DR and INSAT‑3DS

Satellites watch a cyclone long before it comes near land, because the North Indian Ocean has few observing stations. India has monitored cyclones with its own INSAT satellites since 1983. Today the geostationary INSAT-3D, launched on 26 July 2013, and INSAT-3DR, launched on 8 September 2016, are the main sources of information on cyclones over this data-sparse ocean. INSAT-3DS, launched on 17 February 2024, is the follow-on to INSAT-3DR and the replacement for the ageing INSAT-3D.

During a cyclone IMD follows the storm's development and movement with INSAT imagery at hourly intervals. Forecasters estimate a storm's strength from the cloud pattern by the Dvorak technique, which assigns a T number from T1.0 to T8.0 in steps of 0.5; T2.5 corresponds to a cyclonic storm. Polar-orbiting satellites add microwave images, which can locate the centre of a storm at night, and scatterometers, such as those on India's Oceansat and the ASCAT instrument on Europe's MetOp satellites, measure winds over the sea surface.

Doppler Weather Radar Network along the Indian Coast

Radar takes over when the storm comes within range of the coast. A Doppler weather radar measures not only how hard it is raining but also the radial velocity of the raindrops, so forecasters can derive the wind field inside the storm and fix the centre, the eye wall and the rain bands more accurately than from a satellite picture.

India's first Doppler weather radar was set up at Chennai in 2002, and by 2018 the entire coast was covered. In March 2021 the coastal network comprised:

• East coast (10 radars): Agartala, Kolkata, Chandipur, Paradip, Gopalpur, Visakhapatnam, Machilipatnam, Sriharikota, Chennai and Karaikal.
• West coast (5 radars): Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Goa, Mumbai and Bhuj.

The S‑band cyclone radars work at a wavelength of 10 cm. Their maximum range is 500 km, but the curvature of the Earth limits the useful range to about 400 km. For a storm moving towards a radar at the usual 10 to 15 km per hour, this gives roughly 24 hours of tracking between the first sight of the eye and landfall. Once a cyclone is within radar range, IMD sends warnings to All India Radio stations every hour instead of six times a day.

Surface, Ocean and Aircraft Observations

Observations at the surface fill in what satellites and radars cannot measure directly, such as pressure at sea level and the state of the sea. The National Data Buoy Programme was set up in 1997 at the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai. Its network began with 14 moored buoys in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal and later grew to 25. Each buoy measures wind, air pressure, temperature, humidity, sea-surface temperature, currents and waves, and the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, collects the data and passes them to the forecasting offices.

Ships and island stations report wind, pressure and sea-surface temperature, tide gauges record the tide and swell waves, and aircraft in flight report wind and temperature at cruising level. Over the open ocean, where few other observations exist, these reports are invaluable.

Tropical Cyclone Forecasting: Models, Track Error and Storm Surge

Numerical Weather Prediction and Ensemble Forecasting

Tropical cyclone forecasting turns the observations into a prediction of where the storm will go, how strong it will be and when and where it will cross the coast. The tool is numerical weather prediction (NWP), in which computer models solve the equations of the atmosphere forward in time from the observed starting state.

IMD runs several kinds of model side by side:

• Global models: The Global Forecast System (GFS) and the Unified Model of the National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), NCUM, both at 12 km resolution, have run in real time since 2018.
• Ensemble systems: An ensemble runs one model many times from slightly different starting states; the NCMRWF ensemble has 22 members, and the spread of their tracks shows how certain the forecast is.
• Multi-model ensemble (MME): Introduced for track forecasts in 2009, it combines the forecasts of nine Indian and foreign models.
• Coupled cyclone model: The Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) model, coupled with an ocean model, runs on nested grids down to 2 km to simulate the storm itself.

Forecast reach has grown with these tools. IMD extended its forecasts to a lead time of 120 hours in 2013, began extended-range outlooks of cyclone formation for the next two weeks in 2018, and introduced pre-genesis forecasts in 2022, which give a likely track and intensity while the system is still a well-marked low-pressure area. Every track forecast is shown with a cone of uncertainty, drawn from circles around each forecast point whose radius equals the average official forecast error of the previous five years.

Track, Landfall and Intensity Forecast Accuracy

The accuracy of IMD's cyclone forecasts is measured by the error in track, landfall point, landfall time and intensity. Over 2018 to 2022, the average track forecast errors were 74 km, 112 km and 153 km for forecasts 24, 48 and 72 hours ahead. The landfall point errors were 26.2 km, 39.9 km and 75.6 km, and the landfall time errors were 2.8, 4.5 and 8.0 hours.

Compared with 2013 to 2017, track forecast skill improved by 12, 10 and 7 per cent at these three lead times, and landfall point errors fell by 38, 58 and 38 per cent. Intensity forecasts improved only marginally, and the performance of numerical models in predicting intensity is still not satisfactory. Forecasters therefore combine the models with climatology, satellite and radar techniques, and watch especially for rapid intensification, a rise in intensity of 30 knots (about 55 km per hour) or more in 24 hours.

Storm Surge Forecasting and Impact-Based Warnings

The storm surge, the rise of sea water that a cyclone drives onto the coast, is forecast separately from the wind. The ADCIRC (Advanced Circulation) storm surge model, coupled with tides and waves, has been used operationally for about a decade, and its average error in surge height has been about 0.15 m. INCOIS, with IMD, has also set up the Storm Surge Early Warning System for the Indian coasts to forecast cyclone-induced surges and the extent of coastal inundation. The products give the peak surge height at the coast, how far inland the sea will reach and how deep the water will be.

Impact-based forecasting moves the warning from "what the weather will be" to "what the weather will do". Since 2021 IMD has issued dynamic impact-based forecasts that combine the hazard forecast with data on floods, geography and the population and property exposed. For each intensity class IMD lists the expected damage to houses, power lines, roads, crops and the coast, with suggested actions that range from keeping fishermen ashore to large-scale evacuation.

Mission Mausam and the Bharat Forecasting System

Mission Mausam is the national programme to upgrade weather and climate services. The Union Cabinet approved it on 11 September 2024 with an outlay of ₹2,000 crore over two years. It is implemented chiefly by IMD, the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and the NCMRWF, and it covers next-generation radars and satellite systems, high-performance supercomputers and improved Earth system models, with cyclone alerts among its stated aims.

Two results of Mission Mausam and of the Ministry of Earth Sciences' earlier Monsoon Mission are already in use. The Bharat Forecasting System became operational in May 2025 and produces forecasts at a resolution of 6 km for block and panchayat level services. The supercomputers Arunika and Arka, installed in 2025, raised the Ministry of Earth Sciences' computing power to 28 petaflops, which allows models to run at higher resolution.

IMD Four-Stage Cyclone Warning and Colour Codes

Pre-Cyclone Watch, Cyclone Alert, Cyclone Warning and Post-Landfall Outlook

IMD warns State Government officials of an approaching cyclone in four stages, a system it introduced in the pre-monsoon season of 1999. Each stage is issued earlier than the adverse weather it announces and carries more precise information than the one before. Since the post-monsoon season of 2006 the last three stages carry colour codes so that officials and the public can read the danger at a glance.

The stages also follow the storm's distance from land. A cyclone alert is issued while the storm is still more than 500 km from the coast, a cyclone warning once it is within 500 km, and the post-landfall outlook when it is within 200 km.

Cyclone Fani of 2019 showed the stages at work. A pre-cyclone watch went out for Odisha and parts of Andhra Pradesh on 29 April; it became a cyclone alert 66 hours before landfall and a cyclone warning 36 hours before it.

Warning Dissemination: CAP, SMS, NAVTEX and Fishermen Warnings

A warning is useful only when it reaches the people at risk, so IMD sends each bulletin through many channels at once:

• Officials: Telephone, fax and police wireless.
• Broadcast: All India Radio and Doordarshan, in national and regional broadcasts.
• Online: Websites, mobile apps and social media.
• SMS: Messages to disaster managers and registered users.
• Common Alerting Protocol (CAP): A standard data format that lets one warning go out at the same time over many warning systems and applications.

Ports and ships receive their own messages:

• Port warnings: ACWCs and CWCs advise port authorities to hoist the appropriate storm warning signals.
• Coastal and sea area bulletins: Coastal bulletins cover waters up to 75 km from the coastline, and sea area bulletins cover the deep sea beyond.
• NAVTEX: The bulletins are broadcast by NAVTEX, an automated service that prints navigational and weather warnings aboard ships, from coastal stations such as Veraval, Vengurla Point, Balasore and Keating Point in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Fishermen are at risk first, because strong winds and high seas can capsize boats well before a storm reaches land. IMD issues a fishermen warning when, among other conditions, winds along or off the coast are expected to exceed 45 km per hour, squalls or gales are expected, or waves reach four metres or more. These warnings go out four times a day in normal weather and every three hours when a storm is active, in simple language that gives the danger zone by distance and direction from a known place.

The warnings reach fishermen through fisheries officials, ports, local-language radio, SMS and WhatsApp, and at sea through the satellite-based NavIC system. The GAGAN-Enabled Mariner's Instrument for Navigation and Information (GEMINI), a handheld device, relays satellite messages to a fisherman's mobile phone by Bluetooth.

Disaster Management Act, 2005 and Cyclone Governance

NDMA, NEC, SDMA and DDMA under the Disaster Management Act

The legal base for cyclone response is the Disaster Management Act, 2005 (Act No. 53 of 2005), which received the President's assent on 23 December 2005 and, as enacted, had 11 chapters and 79 sections. The Ministry of Home Affairs is the nodal ministry for natural disasters, but the primary responsibility for rescue, relief and rehabilitation rests with the State Governments; the Centre supplements their effort with logistic and financial support when a disaster is beyond a State's resources.

The Act sets up these bodies at each level of government:

• National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA): Chaired by the Prime Minister (Section 3), with up to nine members including a Vice-Chairperson; it lays down policies, plans and guidelines. It began by executive order on 30 May 2005 and was constituted under the Act on 27 September 2006.
• National Executive Committee (NEC): Secretaries of the Union ministries, chaired by the Home Secretary, assisting the NDMA (Section 8).
• State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA): Chaired by the Chief Minister, with up to eight members (Section 14).
• District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA): Chaired by the Collector, District Magistrate or Deputy Commissioner, with the local elected representative as co-chairperson (Section 25).

NDRF, NIDM and Funds for Disaster Response

The Act also created the bodies that do the work on the ground and build skills. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), provided for by Sections 44 and 45 and established in 2006, is a specialist force drawn from the Central Armed Police Forces. It has 16 operational battalions with a total sanctioned strength of 18,581, and each battalion can field 18 self-contained search and rescue teams of 45 personnel. The NDMA, in consultation with the States, places NDRF battalions in the area before a forecast disaster strikes.

The National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM), provided for by Section 42, is responsible mainly for training and capacity development in disaster management. Sections 46 to 50 of the Act provide for disaster response funds and disaster mitigation funds at the national, State and district levels.

Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025 and National Plans

The National Disaster Management Plan, released on 1 June 2016, was the first national plan prepared in the country. It is aligned with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and organises risk reduction for each hazard under five thematic areas, namely understanding risk, inter-agency coordination, structural measures, non-structural measures and capacity development. Its response part lists 18 activities, beginning with early warning and the evacuation of people and animals.

The Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025, received assent on 29 March 2025 and came into force on 9 April 2025. Its main changes are these:

• Plans: NDMA and the SDMAs now prepare the national and State plans, in place of the National and State Executive Committees.
• Statutory status: The National Crisis Management Committee and the High Level Committee, which worked without a statutory basis before the amendment, now have a legal footing.
• Data: A disaster database is to be built at the national and State levels.
• Cities and States: States may constitute Urban Disaster Management Authorities for their capitals and large cities with a municipal corporation, and may raise a State Disaster Response Force.

Cyclone Risk Mitigation: NCRMP, Shelters and Coastal Defences

National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project

A warning saves lives only if people have somewhere safe to go. The National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP) was launched by the Government of India, with World Bank support, to build cyclone shelters, strengthen warning systems and improve emergency response in the cyclone-prone States and Union Territories. It includes a Decision Support System for disaster management authorities.

The project ran in two phases. The Union Cabinet approved Phase I, for Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, in January 2011. The World Bank approved additional financing for Phase I in April 2014, and approved Phase II on 28 May 2015 with a commitment of US$308.4 million; Phase II closed in 2023. Phase II covered six States (Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and West Bengal) and had four components:

• Early warning dissemination systems: Closing the gap between a warning issued at the centre and the communities that must act on it.
• Cyclone risk mitigation infrastructure: Emergency shelters, evacuation routes and the protection of critical infrastructure against cyclones.
• Technical assistance for multi-hazard risk management: Risk modelling and assessment, recovery capacity and resilience planning.
• Project management: Running the national and State implementation units.

Mangroves, Shelterbelts and Embankments

Natural and built barriers reduce the force of a storm before it reaches homes. Cyclones are more predictable in time and place than earthquakes or tsunamis, so damage can be reduced by building cyclone shelters, embankments, dykes and reservoirs, and by planting trees to reduce the speed of the wind. A shelterbelt is such a planting of one or more rows of trees or shrubs that gives shelter from the wind.

Mangrove forests are the coast's natural buffer. During the super cyclone that hit Odisha in 1999, villages with more mangroves experienced less destruction. The Bhitarkanika mangroves of Odisha, which cover 650 square kilometres in the Brahmani and Baitarani deltas, were designated a Ramsar wetland in 2002.

Odisha Model of Cyclone Preparedness: From 1999 to Fani

OSDMA and the Lessons of the 1999 Super Cyclone

Odisha's preparedness grew out of its worst disaster. The super cyclone that crossed the Odisha coast on 29 October 1999 killed 9,887 people by the official count, with 40 missing and 2,507 injured, and 8,119 of the deaths were in Jagatsinghpur district. Most deaths were caused by the storm surge. Before the storm, emergency work in Odisha was handled by the district administration alone, and poor coordination between departments hampered rescue and relief.

On 28 December 1999 the State created the Odisha State Disaster Mitigation Authority, now the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), with the Chief Secretary as chairperson of its governing body. It runs a division for shelter management and capacity building, builds cyclone shelters and early warning systems, and holds mock drills and evacuations in vulnerable areas. The State also raised the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force for response.

Phailin 2013 and Fani 2019 Evacuations

The results showed in later storms. When Cyclone Phailin crossed the coast near Gopalpur on 12 October 2013, the Odisha government and OSDMA had moved close to 10 lakh people to cyclone shelters. Before Cyclone Fani in 2019, Odisha and OSDMA evacuated over 12 lakh residents to higher ground and to cyclone shelters built a few kilometres inland. Fani killed at least 81 people across eastern India and Bangladesh, a small fraction of the 9,887 deaths of 1999. Across India, deaths have fallen to fewer than 100 in any cyclone in recent years, though the huge loss of property is still a challenge.

Community Participation in Cyclone Preparedness

Community participation turns a warning into action in the last village. During Fani, 43,000 volunteers worked alongside about 1,000 emergency workers; OSDMA's training brings shelter management and mock drills into the villages themselves; and local-language radio bulletins carry the warning to fishermen and villagers. The NDRF runs community capacity-building and awareness programmes, and the national plan lists participatory approaches and work with elected representatives among its themes for disaster risk governance.

Participation also faces three challenges:

• Animals: Evacuation must cover animals as well as people, and the national plan lists the two together among its response activities.
• People with disabilities: They need planned help, for which the NDMA has issued guidelines on disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction.
• Trust in warnings: Resilience depends on the confidence that the public and disaster managers place in the warning system.

Regular drills, warnings in the local language that name the places at risk, and planning that involves elected representatives strengthen participation.

Disaster Risk Reduction Frameworks: Hyogo, Sendai and Resilience

Hyogo Framework for Action and the Sendai Framework

India's cyclone policy follows the global frameworks for disaster risk reduction. The first World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction, at Yokohama in May 1994, adopted the Yokohama Strategy, which held that early warning and its effective dissemination are key to disaster prevention. The Hyogo Framework for Action (2005‑2015) followed in 2005. Its five priorities were making disaster risk reduction a priority, improving risk information and early warning, building a culture of safety and resilience, reducing the risks in key sectors, and strengthening preparedness for response.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015‑2030), adopted at Sendai, Japan, in March 2015 and endorsed by the UN General Assembly in June 2015, succeeded Hyogo. Its four priorities for action are understanding disaster risk, strengthening disaster risk governance, investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience, and enhancing preparedness for effective response and to "Build Back Better" in recovery. It also sets seven global targets:

1. Substantially reduce global disaster mortality by 2030.
2. Substantially reduce the number of people affected by disasters by 2030.
3. Reduce direct disaster economic loss in relation to global GDP by 2030.
4. Substantially reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services, including health and educational facilities, by 2030.
5. Substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020.
6. Substantially enhance international cooperation to developing countries by 2030.
7. Substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information by 2030.

India's measures span both frameworks. Before Sendai came the four-stage cyclone warning (1999), OSDMA (1999), the Disaster Management Act, 2005, the NDRF (2006) and Phase I of the NCRMP (2011). After Sendai came Phase II of the NCRMP (2015), the National Disaster Management Plan of 2016 aligned with Sendai, dynamic impact-based forecasts (2021), Mission Mausam (2024) and the Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025.

Disaster Resilience to Cyclones

In the NDMA's definition, disaster resilience is the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including by preserving and restoring its essential basic structures and functions.

Resilience to cyclones is determined by several elements that together make a resilience framework:

• Early warning: How efficient the warning system is, and how far the public and disaster managers trust it.
• Response: How well actions are carried out before, during and after the storm.
• Infrastructure: Shelters, embankments, roads and power lines built to withstand cyclones as part of long-term preparedness.
• Finance: Mechanisms that pay for recovery from a cyclone's impact.
• Risk knowledge: Loss forecasts and vulnerability maps that show where damage will fall.

India's cyclone system serves Sendai's seventh target directly, since it gives multi-hazard warnings to India's coast and to the other 12 countries of the WMO/ESCAP Panel, and Odisha's falling death toll shows progress towards the first.

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