Pune: IITM’s WiFEX-II to Boost Fog Forecasting in North and Northeast India, Enhance Flight Safety
Pune: IITM’s WiFEX-II to Boost Fog Forecasting in North and Northeast India, Enhance Flight Safety
Pune: Building on a decade of success at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) has launched WiFEX-II, the second phase of its Winter Fog Experiment. The upgraded project will extend localized, runway-specific fog forecasts to airports across North and Northeast India, including the upcoming Noida International Airport at Jewar, Hisar Airport in Haryana, and Guwahati Airport in Assam.
Launched in 2015 under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), WiFEX is among the world’s few long-term scientific studies dedicated to fog—a weather phenomenon that disrupts air, rail, and road transport across the Indo-Gangetic Plain.
Over the years, IITM scientists have deployed advanced technologies—micrometeorology towers, ceilometers, and high-frequency sensors—to create a granular dataset on temperature, humidity, wind, aerosols, and soil heat. This has led to the development of a high-resolution (3 km) fog forecast model that predicts fog onset, intensity, duration, and dissipation with over 85% accuracy for dense fog events (visibility below 200 meters).
“This has significantly improved flight safety, reduced diversions and delays, and minimized passenger inconvenience,” said M Ravichandran, Secretary, MoES, while inaugurating WiFEX-II and a new Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratory at IITM on Tuesday.
WiFEX’s findings have also shaped air quality policies by highlighting the influence of urban heat islands, pollution, and land-use changes on fog persistence. Under WiFEX-II, dedicated sensors at more airports will feed real-time data into forecasting systems, enabling better operational decisions during foggy conditions.
Coming Soon: DSS for Air Quality in Pune and Mumbai
On the sidelines of the launch, IITM announced plans to roll out its Decision Support System (DSS) for air quality in Pune and Mumbai within a year. Already operational in Delhi, DSS provides 120-hour air quality forecasts and identifies specific pollution sources, helping civic authorities take targeted action during critical episodes.
“We are in the final stages of approvals with the Pune Municipal Corporation,” said Dr. Sachin Ghude, IITM scientist and project lead.
