User:Jason Rees/NIO Naming

At its 26th annual session in March 1999, the WMO/ESCAP Panel on North Indian Tropical Cyclones noted with interest, that the WMO/ESCAP Typhoon Committee had agreed to start naming tropical cyclones in the Western Pacific on January 1, 2000. As a result, the panel decided to appoint a rapporteur to investigate the naming of tropical cyclones over the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea with the assistance of the WMO and its own technical support unit before reporting back at its next session. The panel subsequently discussed the contents of this report and agreed in principle with the report's recommendation that there was a need for tropical cyclones to be named in its region. The representatives of India expressed concern at naming tropical cyclones, because of the regional, cultural and linguistic diversity of the panel's member countries. As a result, the panel agreed that the subject would be considered further at the next session and asked its eight members to provide its rapporteur with at least 10 names as well as their meanings, in accordance with the various criteria that the rapporteur had proposed before the end of the year. At the following session, the rapporteur reported to the panel that seven of the eight members had submitted a list of names to him and presented these to the panel, which reviewed them and felt that they would not be appealing to either the media or the public. As a result, the panel requested that the members should provide the rapporteur with a fresh set of names by June 2001, which should be appealing to both the public and the media. Over the next few months, there was a poor response to this request from members of the panel and at the 29th session of the panel, the rapporteur noted that it wasn't possible to complete the project, without the full cooperation of members. In response to the rapporteur's comments, the panel decided to urge all of its members to submit their proposed names to the rapporteur and ask for a named person who could be contacted to talk about the proposed naming scheme. Over the next year, seven of the eight members submitted their proposed names to the rapporteur, however, at its 30th session, the panel decided that the naming list could not be implemented during the 2003 Season, as India hadn't submitted its names. As a result, the panel urged India to cooperate and submit a list of names for the panel's consideration, while other members were asked to submit the pronunciation of the names that they had suggested.

At the 31st session of the panel in March 2004, the rapporteur revealed that the proposed list of names was ready for use by panel members, however, India had still not submitted its list of names despite a promise to cooperate from the Director General of the India Meteorological Department (IMD). As a result, the rapporteur recommended that the panel endorsed the proposed list of names and started to use it on an experimental basis, during the 2004 season after India had submitted its names. The rapporteur also recommended that the IMD's Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre in New Delhi, would be responsible for naming the tropical cyclones, once the system had become a cyclonic storm with 3-minute sustained winds of at least 34 kn. It was also suggested that each name should only be used once and that the list of names should be replaced for the 2010 season and every 10 years afterwards. In response the Indian representatives decided to seek approval from the WMO's permanent representative of India for Indian names to be included in the naming scheme and for it to be implemented during the season on an experimental basis. The work on the proposed naming list was completed in May 2004, after India submitted its names and was available to be used by the IMD from September 2004, before the first system was named Onil on October 1, 2004. At its 33rd session, the panel noted that there had been keen media interest in the naming scheme and decided to ask the IMD to continue naming tropical cyclones, before it reviewed it at its following session. Over the next few years, the IMD continued to name tropical cyclones when they had become a cyclonic storm with 3-minute sustained winds of at least 34 kn, before the panel noted at their 45th session in 2018 that the majority of names had been used and that only 6 remained. As a result of five countries joining the panel since the original list of names was created, the panel decided that a new list of names would be prepared and presented to the panel. Over the next 18 months, each of the member countries submitted a list of names before the final list of names was approved and publically released by the Panel on April 28, 2020. The first name to be assigned from this fresh list of names was Nisarga, which was named by the IMD when it became a cyclonic storm on June 2, 2020.