Journalism of Courage
A unique hand-held device made by the instrumentation department of Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) here is set to transform the way weather bulletins are transmitted across met offices. From November,the state along with Gujarat and Goa will start paperless recording of weather data,which is to go on the global network. Weather bulletins till date is sent through emails or passed through telephone calls.
The touchscreen Hand-Held Data Logger (HHDL),developed under the guidelines of the World Meteorological Organisation,has 200 to 300 inbuilt quality-checks.The device can save one years data on temperature,rainfall,humidity,wind speed,wind direction,current weather and past weather and will help check accuracy. The device will record the observation,check with the stored data and with a quality control in place,the accuracy will be ensured.
The entire process will be done through these devices,which will save paper and time, said S Krishniah,DDG (instrumentation) IMD,Pune. His team has been working on this project for the last two years.
The Pune IMD receives bulletins on email and printouts had to be taken to be forwarded to other centres. The device will however save all this work and the data will be directly uploaded. While the pilot prohect will cover 16 observatories across Maharashtra,Gujarat and Goa,the plan is to cover 200 observatories. These observatories will start logging their weather data using this device on a three-hourly real-time basis. We have emails to send information. But with load shedding and the information communicated through telephone lacking clarity,this device will help tackle these issues, said Krishnaiah.
The device will be given to key met stations. The weather data will be relayed to the Regional Meteorological Centre at Mumbai where values will be rechecked and then sent to the National Data Centre,Pune,after which it will be uploaded on global weather networks.
Senior met officials said the pilot project if successful will be replicated across the country from March 2014. The software for the device was developed by the Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research at the IIT,Bombay.
