India, April 26 -- The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) on Thursday commissioned a state-of-the-art X-band dual-polarisation Doppler weather radar at its High Altitude Cloud Physics Laboratory (HACPL) in Mahabaleshwar under the Centre's Mission Mausam initiative, officials said.

The system was inaugurated by M. Ravichandran, secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, in the presence of A. Suryachandra Rao, director, IITM, and Somya S. Sarkar, director of the Space Applications Centre, along with senior scientists.

Installed at an altitude of around 1,400 metres above sea level in the Western Ghats, the radar will function as a "weather eye in the sky", tracking rainfall, cloud movement and storms in real time. The location is...