Met office gets young visitors

School, college students get a first-hand feel of gadgets, forecasting techniques

Keen observers: Schoolchildren listen intently as an official explains various conventional equipment exhibited at RMC, Chennai, on Thursday.

The Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai, opened its doors to visitors on Thursday to elaborate on its weather observation and forecasting techniques in commemoration of the World Meteorological Day.

Several schoolchildren and people from other places, including Tiruchi, visited the weather observatories in Nungambakkam, Meenambakkam and Doppler weather radar facility on Rajaji Salai.

T.Savitha, a resident of Mahalingapuram, said, “I was excited to see the facilities in the weather observatory that help to forecast city weather. I may have to seek permission to visit Nungambakkam on other days.”

Live demonstration

Many school and college students too enthusiastically raised questions about weather predictions during the live demonstration of the functioning of automatic weather station.

This year, the RMC had exhibited details on the tracking of Cyclone Vardah and visitors to Doppler Weather Radar facility too were briefed on how it helps cyclone and rainfall.

At a meeting held later in the day, Thara V.Prabakaran, project director, CAIPEEX, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, said experiments are being carried out to investigate the efficacy of cloud seeding in bringing rainfall and the methodology to be followed to succeed in such initiatives.

Coinciding with this year’s theme, ‘Understanding Clouds’, she highlighted the various experiments taken up to understand the cloud processes and provide better rain forecast.

Citing studies that cloud seeding may increase rainfall by up to 7%, she said: “We have nearly 820 hours of airborne observations and these are being analysed. Selection of cloud matters in the impact of cloud seeding,” she said.

Flood mitigation

Balaji Narasimhan, associate professor, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras, underlined the need to regulate urbanisation particularly near river basins to prevent flooding. It is important to find alternative sources to store the surplus water flowing into city waterways like Adyar river to prevent floods during torrential rains and monsoon and also tackle water crisis.

He elaborated on the potential of Doppler weather radar data for developing flood modelling and warning system for Chennai.

S.Lakshmi Narayanan, former meteorologist and S.B.Thampi, Deputy Director General of Meteorology, Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai, also spoke.