New Delhi, June 4: The country’s weather scientists have launched five-day forecasts of temperature, rainfall and winds for each district, combining number-crunching efforts from India, Europe, Japan, the US and the UK.

The new agro-meteorological advisory service — primarily to help farming operations — is now active for 575 districts and will cover the remaining districts within the next few months, science and technology minister Kapil Sibal announced today.

The forecasts containing quantitative values for rainfall, maximum and minimum temperature, wind speed and humidity and cloudiness for five days will be delivered through local government authorities in each district and the media, Sibal said.

The district-level advisories have replaced advisories sent out by the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) to 127 agro-meteorological zones in the country over the past decade.

They are expected to help farmers in operations like planting seeds, spraying pesticides or adding fertilisers to the soil.

“There were gaps in the old advisories,” said Laxman Singh Rathore, head of the agricultural meteorology services division at the India Meteorological Department.

“There was lack of objectivity in some of the old advisories,” he added. “The new ones will be more reliable, and some will be customised for specific crop areas.”

The forecasts will be based on a synthesis of numerical models — simulations of the global weather — run on computers by weather forecasting centres in Europe, Japan, the UK and the US, in addition to the model used by the NCMRWF.

The earlier forecast relied only on the NCMRWF model.