IMD’s observatories go high-tech; now, all weather data entry done digitally

Introduced by a team of scientists at National Data Centre (NDC) housed at IMD, Pune, this digital entry is aimed at helping maintain the records safely, besides allowing observers to keep a track of real-time events.

IMD operates over 200 Met observatories all over the country. Additionally, it collates similar data from more than 300 sub-meteorological observatories which are not essentially collected by IMD officials.

“Our pilot run commenced in August and after completion of the training of scientific assistants attached to the observatories, data at 180 observatories is now keyed in to the digital MMR. Special training workshops were conducted to train the scientific assistants in this process of upgradation. The process of doing this in the rest of the observatories is underway. Digitisation is vital as it minimises error, prevents discontinuity in data or any other forms of gaps at the time of data entry at the observatory-level itself,” A D Tathe, who heads the NDC, told The Indian Express.

NDC is home to India’s weather data, collected on a daily basis from across the country. Data aggregated here is later cleaned and archived. Established in 1977, it is a rich treasure trove of the country’s weather history and the centre boasts of a digital repository comprising daily weather charts and maps available since 1900. IMD, Pune, is also the Regional Climate Centre (RCC) recognised by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

Weather observations are collected eight times a day at every observatory and manual entry is generally done by the five scientific assistants assigned for the task at every observatory. In such cases, chances of manual errors, misrepresentation of data at the time of data entry and other unintentional errors pose a threat to the weather data-gathering process.

Elaborating on the need for digitisation, Tathe said, “Weather data is crucial as it aids meteorologists in issuing forecasts for a region, both for short and extended periods. It is on the accuracy of this data that weather models present output. If data fed into these weather models are inaccurate, the output generated could mislead forecasters.

Like researchers, data is key for operational meteorologists who issue forecasts, warnings and other day-to-day weather content.”

This move has also enabled weather officials to have real-time weather data at any given point of time in the day. Earlier, the data would reach NDC very late, after which the process of cleaning and archiving would start. Obtaining weather observations from certain stations would, at times, take even up to four years, but the team at NDC has now solved the problem permanently.

“With digitisation, the data is almost ready for archives within 24 hours,” said Tathe, who has also spearheaded two similar digitisation projects at the Centre since the beginning of 2019.