Cyclone Fani, is the first severe, cyclonic storm to have formed in April in India’s oceanic neighbourhood since 1976, according to the records of the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
According to IMD, it is a consequence of global warming and it is forming due to the warming of the Bay of Bengal basin.
Data from the IMD’s cyclone-statistics unit show that the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea have collectively registered 46 severe cyclonic storms in between 1965-2017.
Tropical cyclones in the Indian neighbourhood begin as depressions or a gradual build-up of warm air and pockets of low pressure. About 35% of such formations intensify to cyclones and only 7% intensify to very severe cyclones.
The IMD ranks cyclones on a 5-point scale.
India Meteorological Department (IMD)
It is the principal agency under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India responsible for meteorological observations, weather forecasting and seismology. It is headquartered in Delhi and operates hundreds of observation stations across India and Antarctica. Regional offices of IMD are located at Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Nagpur and Guwahati.
IMD is also one of the six Regional Specialised Meteorological Centres of the World Meteorological Organization. It has the responsibility for forecasting, naming and distribution of warnings for tropical cyclones in the Northern Indian Ocean region, including the Malacca Straits, the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS)
INCOIS is an autonomous organization of the Government of India, under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), located in Hyderabad. It was established in 1999 under the MoES and is a unit of the Earth System Science Organization (ESSO).
It is mandated to provide the best possible ocean information and advisory services to society, industry, government agencies and the scientific community through sustained ocean observations and constant improvement through systematic and focused research.
