150 Years of IMD

Mintu Sarma 

(sarmamintu9@gmail.com)

The India Meteorological Department (IMD), one of the oldest departments of the Government of India, is celebrating its eventful 150-year journey. The completion of 150 after a modest start in 1875 was undoubtedly a milestone in the annals of the development and modernization of the department. Since its inception, IMD has drawn the attention of the public to be an information centre for different weather predictions, including severe weather warnings such as thunderstorms, heavy rains, freezing rains, cyclones, droughts, etc. Issuing an accurate cyclone forecast in advance of IMD has earned it global acclaim.

IMD is one of the oldest departments in the country, established by the British after a weather tragedy in Calcutta (now Kolkata). A powerful tropical cyclone hit Calcutta in 1864, and mind-boggling numbers of people and animals lost their lives. This is considered one of the deadliest cyclones in the country so far. The severity of these calamities highlighted the absence of a system to monitor atmospheric parameters, which forced Britain’s East India Company to establish a meteorological department by appointing H. F. Bland Ford as a meteorological reporter in 1875. It was a modest start for the India Meteorological Department (IMD) by establishing its headquarters in Kolkata. Later, IMD’s headquarters were shifted to Shimla, then Pune, and finally to Mausambhawan, Lodi Road, New Delhi.

Informally, meteorological services in India started with the issuing of a port warning to Kolkata by the East India Company in 1865. As time passed, meteorological services expanded to many sectors of the country. Looking back, it can be mentioned that IMD started  Climate service in 1908, aviation meteorological service in 1911, Ozone monitoring in 1928, agro-meteorological service in 1945, positional astronomy in 1955, marine services, and flood meteorological services in 1966, storm surge warning in 1977, Antarctica expedition in 1982, mountain weather service for Himalaya in 1998, Digitisation and automation in 2006, coastal inundation forecast in 2013 in collaboration with the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), air quality forecast in collaboration with Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in 2018, impact based forecast in 2019, urban meteorological services in 2020, GIS-based application in 2020. Now IMD is ready to accept the new challenges related to weather forecasting and is planning to disseminate weather information to every household as well as every farmer in the country with state-of-the-art technology by launching the “HAR HARMAusam..GharGharMausam” mission. 

To commemorate the glorious journey of the department, IMD is celebrating 150 years of its establishment from January 15, 2024, to January 15, 2025. The solemn start of this celebration had formally commenced in a boastful function at Vigyan Bhawan New Delhi in the presence of Shri JagdeepDhankar, the vice president of India, Shri KirenRijiju Union Minister of Earth Sciences, Dr. M Ravichandandran, Secretary MoES, and many other high-profile dignitaries on January 15, 2024. During this opening programme, the vice president of India launched several conspicuous projects of IMD, such as the indigenously developed Decision Support System, Panchayat Mausam Seva for farmers, IMD’s Mobile App, Mausamgram, and the National Framework of Climate Services (NFCS). During this year’s long journey, IMD has reached several milestones, from expanding surface observatory networks to the installation of sophisticated Doppler Weather Radars (DWR) in different parts of the country to servicing the nation round the clock. The execution of several enthralling projects, such as the installation of a web of automatic weather stations (AWS), an automatic rain gauge (ARG), and the Digital Current Weather Indicating System (DCWIS), are the mentionable footsteps in the path of development of the department. The policy, plan, and programmemes of IMD are aligned with the mainstream programme of India and take a pivotal role in increasing the farmer’s income through proper weather forecasting and weather advisories issued by IMD in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and state and central agriculture universities. The paradigm shift in all components of IMD’s services since its inception has made the department self-sufficient in accepting new challenges related to meteorology. The unique project “Panchayat Mausam Seva,” aiming to disseminate weather information to every house, was launched on January 15th, ’24, and it must be another conspicuous milestone for IMD in the days to come. There was a time when people used to observe the sun and moon to acquire knowledge about the upcoming weather. However, the modernization of IMD and its credible services to the nation over the last 150 years has become a vivid testament to its reliability, which has elicited significant public acclamation.