40 automatic weather station to come up in Arunachal's border areas

New Delhi/Guwahati, April 1 The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Friday said it would install 40 automatic weather stations (AWS) on the border areas of Arunachal Pradesh.

Once set up, the installations are expected to be helpful not just for enhanced weather observation from the region but also to the armed forces.

The IMD would be installing the 40 AWS in Arunachal Pradesh as part of the expansion of the AWS network for better monitoring and capturing of all-weather events.

This will be useful not just for the IMD but also for the Air Force and the Indian army troops, and also the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), that move along the difficult terrain in the eastern Himalayas in the northeastern state.

The demand for augmentation of the existing observation network in Arunachal Pradesh has been pending for many years. Barely 1/3rd of Arunachal Pradesh's area that is along the Assam is plains and the undulating foothills but the rest of the 2/3rds is all mighty Himalayas and much of it is high altitude terrain that witnesses almost round the year snow-fall too. The state is also known for its extremely high rainfall for almost eight months of the year.

"We also plan to commission Aviation Weather Observing Systems for all Heliport stations of NE India for unmanned and safety of landing in hilly terrain of NE region," KN Mohan of IMD Guwahati said in his presentation during a virtual event to mark the 25 years of operations of the IMD's Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) in Guwahati.

"The Met Department has recently installed one snow gauge each in Tawang and Bomdila districts and plans to install 2 AWS in each district, apart from the 40 in the border areas," another scientist from Guwahati, Sanjay Shaw told .

The work for these installations has already started, Shaw said.

Mohan also said that the team has also planned expansion of Automatic Rain Gauge (ARG) network to urban cities of Agartala, Shillong, Itanagar and other developing cities of northeastern India for real time monitoring of special distribution of rain.

The other installations planned include eight X-Band Doppler Weather Radars in seven states of the NE India; data processing server for reception, quality checks & GIS representation of data from all AWS/ARG/Airport & other data of NE India.

Among others, IMD director general (meteorology) Mrutyunjay Mohapatra and secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, M Ravichandran also spoke on the occasion.

"Get feedback from respective states and the districts as you plan expansion of observatories and customized forecasts," Ravichandran advised.

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