This is only a temporary closure in response to the eviction notice issued to the India Meteorological Department (IMD) by the Maritime Board, Kerala State. Despite the closure, the Automatic Rain Gauge (ARG) installed in the same location continues to provide essential weather data, and this office is utilizing it for weather forecasting purposes, thereby not compromising the forecasting capabilities along Kerala's coastal areas. 

Meteorological Center (MC)-Thiruvananthapuram has approached the Government of Kerala to provide a suitable site with a building within a 2-3 km radius of the old observatory so that the existing climatological data of the Alappuzha observatory remains relevant and applicable to the new location.

Currently there are no plans for establishing additional weather monitoring stations in the State of Kerala. However, the installation process of one X-Band Radar on the campus of Pazhassi College, Pulppally, Wayanad, is progressing as per the timeline. IMD has already established a sufficient number of Automatic Weather Stations/Automatic Rain Gauges/ and Agro-AWS (AWS/ARG/Agro-AWS) networks in the State of Kerala. Also, IMD has already established AWS and ARG networks in sensitive districts, Idukki and Wayanad, as given in Annexure-1.

The AWS/ARG/Agro-AWS are under the annual maintenance contract (AMC) for maintenance and calibration. The following measures are implemented/being implemented to address the reliability issues of the automatic weather stations and rain gauges in Kerala:

• MC-Thiruvananthapuram is undertaking frequent field comparisons of meteorological parameters such as air temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, rainfall, wind speed, and wind direction measured at AWS and ARG stations with standard instruments.
• Development of a Quality Control (QC) system for Gross Error Check, Climatological Consistency Checks, Time Consistency Checks, Internal Consistency Checks, and Spatial Consistency Check is undertaken by IMD. The first version of the QC system has been implemented at the Central Data Receiving Server.
• Adequate spares of essential components of AWS and ARG systems are kept to undertake Preventive and Corrective maintenance of AWS and ARG stations.
• IMD is organizing routine training programs to enhance the competency of manpower involved in the maintenance of AWS and ARG stations.

 

Annexure-1

AWS/ARG/AGRO-AWS NETWORK
S. No.	State/ UT	Aws	Arg	Agro-Aws
1	KERALA	109	30	3

 

 

This information was given by Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology and Earth Science, Dr. Jitendra Singh in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

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NKR/ KS

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