Weather forecasting in Villages

 

Credit- WMO for Youth

Recently, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj issued guidelines regarding weather forecasts in every village. Let’s learn more about this facility provided by the Union government.

Weather forecasting:  According to the latest notification issued by the Union minister of Panchayati Raj,  weather forecasting will be done for five days in a week. The details will be updated every hour and this facility will be available at Panchayat level. This great initiative is jointly organized by three organizations namely the INDIAN METEROLOGICAL DEPARTMENT,  the UNION MINISTRY OF PANCHAYATI RAJ, AND the MINISTRY OF EARTH AND SCIENCES. The aim of this initiative is to empower the rural communities and enhance disaster preparedness at the grassroots level... The weather forecasting data will be available at the portal of e- Gram Swaraj, Gram Manchitra portal, and also on meri panchayat application.

The following data will be shown in the portal/app …

1.   Current temperature of that panchayat

2.   Wind speed of that panchayat

3.   Rainfall and relative humidity

4.   Wind direction

5.   Wind speed

6.   Cloud cover(in %)

Here in the above paragraph, we have mentioned the Indian meteorology department let’s discuss some of its achievements.

1.   The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has declared IMD as a regional specialized meteorological center

2.   The monsoon mission of IMD(2012) has started long range monsoon forecasting.

3.   In the SAFAR initiative of IMD, the air quality index is also monitored.

4.   The IMD has also started the WIFEX initiative which does the WINTER FOG EXPERIMENTS.

5.   INSAT AND DOPPLER radars belong to IMD.

Significance of this initiative.:

1.   Agriculture and food security: On regular updates of weather the farmers will be happier because they will do their work which will be suitable for their crop. So the food wastage and time wastage can be reduced very sharply.

2.   Disaster management: The regular update of weather will also help in proper disaster management. The economic and livelihood losses will be very much reduced.

3.   Economic impact: Due to proper update of weather, the loss of economy will be reduced very much.

4.   Logistics: The weather update will provide happiness to Logistics and transport providers. The clear weather helps them to provide the essential items at a very accurate and right time 

5.   Resource management: The weather forecast will also help with proper resource management like the grains to godown, the infrastructure materials at their safe places, etc.

6.   Public health and safety:  The proper update in weather will be better for Public health and safety in extreme summer people can be saved from heat strokes, in extreme winter people can be saved by severe cold winds, etc.

CHALLENGES OF WEATHER FORECAST AT THE PANCHAYAT LEVEL:

1.   Since India is a tropical country where there is extreme variability of weather at a few kilometers of distance. This will create huge chaos for the authorities providing this facility.

2.   Being the most heavily populated nation in the world,  our Bharat has hyper locality problem. This can create a disturbance in the network due to which the improper news can spread among the villagers.

3.   We have such neighbors who never support us in any place. So we cannot expect them that they will provide any type of information which is needed by us.

4.   The observational infrastructure of India especially in weather forecasting is very bad. At several events, we have seen IMD fails like the Uttarakhand flash flood in 2013, etc.

Since the initiative is very good the challenges are also very huge. Let us see how the government faces these challenges …..



Team Yuva Aaveg-
Shashwat