The government is planning to make it a rule for domestic airlines to share weather data collected during their flights with the weather office. This could help make weather forecasts much better.
Right now, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) sends up weather balloons from 50-60 stations to collect important information about temperature, humidity, and wind speed at different heights. This information is very important for weather forecasting.
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However, there are over 6,000 flights taking off and landing in India every day, and if airlines share the weather data from these flights, it could greatly increase the amount of information available for forecasts.
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M. Ravichandran, who is the secretary of the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences, said that his ministry is working with the civil aviation ministry to make it mandatory for airlines to share weather data within a year. He said this data will be helpful not just for flights but also for better weather predictions everywhere.
Ravichandran explained that better weather forecasts depend on having more weather data. With new airports opening in different parts of the country, the weather office would have access to data from more places, which will help in making more accurate predictions for each region.
He also mentioned that weather observations from airplanes and weather balloons are more important than those from the ground. This is because they show what is happening in the atmosphere at different heights, which is key to understanding weather systems like storms. Temperature, humidity, and wind conditions at different levels of the atmosphere help to track how storms form and develop.