As many as 39 Automatic Weather Stations (AWS), a meteorological station at which observations are made and transmitted automatically, have been set up in the State by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) ahead of the monsoon, which is expected to set in over by May 27.
Already 30 AWSs are functional in the State providing data on weather parameters such as temperature, rainfall, wind, and atmospheric pressure every 15 minutes.
With this, 69 AWSs would be operational in addition to the 70 manual rain gauges which are enough for monitoring the weather parameters of a region as per the standard prescribed by the Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS), according to a senior IMD officer.
However, the IMD will also set up another 77 AWS in different parts of the State in the next three months. Kerala had earlier sought 100 AWS after the devastating flood in 2018.
Data validity
The IMD official said that though various agencies had set up AWS for various purposes, only the data from an AWS which is periodically calibrated by the IMD officials had validity in India.
An AWS will transmit the data packet through the mobile data network to the central server at Pune and from there to the web server. Anyone can access the data from the web page of the IMD free of cost.
All sensors for the measurement of weather parameters are connected to the data logger of the AWS.
The data logger will sample and measure all the weather parameters of every second to every minute as per requirement and storage in the memory of the device.
It transmits the average data of every 15 minutes to the central server in Pune through GSM (Mobile) data network, from there to the web server and the public is able to see every 15 minutes data of the last seven days.
