New Delhi, Jan. 16 -- India Meteorological Department will be launching Mission Mausam phase II by April this year, M Ravichandran, secretary, ministry of earth sciences said on Thursday, on the occasion of 151st Foundation Day of IMD. This would involve a massive upgradation of observational systems over the land and the ocean, he said. One of the most significant aspects of this would be installation of 200 automatic weather stations in important cities including Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Chennai. There are around 1000 AWS in India. The upgradation will begin with installation of 20 AWS in Delhi this month. Another concern that Mission Mausam phase II will try to counter is ocean observations. Presently 50% of the ocean observations are being provided by US institutions. "Because of the current geopolitical situation, we need to very rapidly upgrade ocean observations because our seasonal predictions especially for monsoon are completely dependent on ocean parameters. We are also asking other countries to upgrade their ocean observations so we are not dependent on one country," said Ravichandran. He also pointed that monsoon forecasts have improved from 7% error margin to 2% mainly because of ocean observations. "In this regard we need deep ocean parameters, ocean parameters up to 100 km from coast, coastal radars etc.," he said.P4...