In India, all the meteorological data collected since 1901 is currently hosted at the National Data Centre housed at IMD, Pune. (Source: File)Operated by the IMD, the Central Agro-Meteorological Observatory (CAgMO) in Pune has become the country’s first observatory to go fully digital.With this, the data coming out of the facility will be geo-tagged and instruments WiFi-enabled. Besides, all surface-based meteorological observations, such as temperature, rainfall, pressure, soil temperature and moisture, and wind speed, will be recorded by digital instruments in an automated manner.Launching the “smart” observatory on Monday, on the occasion of World Meteorological Day, IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said, “This is a paradigm shift in the manner in which meteorological data, particularly the surface meteorological data, will be recorded. This demonstrates IMD’s strength and capabilities. We hope to digitise all the observatories in a time-bound manner as per our vision of Mission Mausam-2030.”Weather forecasters, world over, rely heavily on accurate and timely weather data recorded daily at synchronised timings. In India, all the meteorological data collected since 1901 is currently hosted at the National Data Centre housed at IMD, Pune.“With continuous data recordings, it will be possible to closely observe even minute variations in the weather — be it diurnal (day and night time), hourly, daily or monthly-basis. More importantly, we will also be able to develop climatological data, which is presently unavailable,” noted Mohapatra.At the CAgMO observatory located on the campus of the College of Agriculture in Pune’s Shivajinagar, both manual (recordings by observations and eye-reading) and self-recording type instruments are used. Some data recordings are taken every three hours of the day in line with global practices.“Digitisation in data recording will bring in more robust and accurate weather data. We have replaced mechanical and analogous instruments with digital ones. From three-hourly intervals, we will go down to hourly readings, and some even real-time readings and archiving,” said Ranju Madan, who heads the Surface Instrumentation division of the India Meteorological Department (IMD).Story continues below this adThere are 206 full-time and 320 part-time observatories across India that collect meteorological data every day.Globally, mercury-based barometers have been shelved out owing to safety concerns handling the element. In India, 200 observatories now operate digital barometers with continual efforts to phase-out mercury barometers underway since 2015-2016.The digitisation of observatories is also an important step towards obtaining accurate data at an increased frequency and at a higher resolution, which will significantly help maintain data quality. For instance, the automated rain gauges have a resolution of 0.1mm while the newly developed pressure sensor offers a resolution of 0.1 hecta Pascal. The digital temperature sensor can record temperatures ranging between -30 and 60 degrees Celsius and will function on an in-built data fusion algorithm, thus being more accurate.