The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) is an executive ministry of the Government of India, established on January 29, 2006, to provide a comprehensive and integrated approach to the study of the Earth and its environment. Its creation was a result of the reorganization of the Department of Ocean Development (DOD), which was originally set up in 1981. The problem it solved was the fragmentation of functions related to meteorology, oceanography, seismology, and geology, which were previously handled by various agencies like the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
The MoES works by integrating scientific activities across three main areas: Atmospheric Sciences, Ocean Science & Technology, and Seismology. Its mechanism involves providing services for forecasting monsoons, weather, climate, ocean state, earthquakes, and tsunamis. It also focuses on the exploration and exploitation of marine resources, both living and non-living, and plays a nodal role in Antarctic/Arctic and Southern Ocean research. The ministry is connected to several key institutions, including the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), and the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR).
A significant recent change is the consolidation of five autonomous institutes under a unified governance mechanism called the Earth System Sciences Council (ESSC), which was formally registered in December 2023 to streamline operations and address climate-related challenges collectively. The MoES also implements major programs like the Deep Ocean Mission and the Monsoon Mission (MM-II), which began in September 2017, focusing on predicting weather and climate extremes. Furthermore, the Ministry augmented its supercomputing capacity to 21 PetaFLOPS to improve the resolution and accuracy of weather and climate models.