The India Meteorological Department (IMD) will soon set up additional 530 district agromet units in the country, apart from introducing new products such as land surface water index, land surface temperature and leaf area index that are used for agricultural services like irrigation, sowing and fertilizer applications. N Chattopadhyay,head, agromet division, IMD, said the MeT department is working with all states on how weather-sensitive information can be sent to farmers. The Rs 190-crore project of the Union ministry of earth sciences was announced at a recent state level meeting held in Pune. “At present, these units exist in each agro-climatic zone. By 2020, every district in the country will have one such unit to ensure dissemination of improved district scale agromet advisory services and experimental generation of sub-district scale agromet advisories. The IMD already generates forecasts, which are sent to these units, which have agro-meteorologist and experts to gauge the effect of impending weather phenomenon on crops and agricultural activities. Advisories are then prepared and issued,” Chattopadhyay said. Alerts are sent out to farmers twice a week in 14 languages through various channels including television and radio. The IMD’s SMS services reach 2 crore farmers in the country, while future targets include reaching 9 crore farmers.
“The IMD is also endeavouring to improve the ‘alert’ services for farmers under extreme weather conditions. These services are an integral part of IMD’s climate services, which have already been initiated,” Chattopadhyay said. These services are provided free of cost. Farmers just have to register themselves on the Agrimet website giving details about the crop on which they would like to receive advisories, he said. In addition, around 870 agromet observatories will come up for agro-meteorological services on monitoring evaporation, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, dew fall and desert locust monitoring. “The component of research and development will also include development of a land surface water index, land surface temperature, distribution, evapotranspiration and leaf area index. The modules will help farmers in irrigation, sowing, fertilizer and pesticide application activities, among other things,” Chattopadhyay said. In the future, the plan is to go down to the block level. At present this programme is functioning at the district level. The country has around 650 districts and 6500 blocks. In Maharashtra, the programme is functional in 34 districts of the state.
There are plans for 25 DAMU units.The Pune office of IMD set up a Climate Data Centre in 2004, and since then, gridded data on daily rainfall and temperature is being collated. The IMD has, in recent years, added more ‘domain-specific’ forecasts to its list. Other than agriculture, the list now includes forecasts for those travelling via national highways and those travelling to pilgrimages such as Amarnath, Kailash Mansarovar, Char Dham and Vaishno Devi.The IMD has also started issuing warnings on heat waves, cold waves and extreme weather events.
