IMD now gets Korean Radiosonde

Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi installed a new Korean Radiosonde at the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) Centre here on Thursday.

A Radiosonde is a battery-powered telemetry instrument package carried into the atmosphere usually by a weather balloon that measures various atmospheric parameters and transmits them by radio to a ground receiver.

The IMD would use the Radiosonde for collection of upper atmospheric data such as temperature, pressure, humidity, wind direction and wind speed.

Earlier, the IMD was using Radiosonde and radio wind for similar data with the help of weather radar; and this system had been replaced by a Chinese Radiosonde in July 2012. However, the Chinese system does not work during formation of cumulonimbus cloud, thunderstorm or, even, heavy rainfall.

The Korean Radiosonde is a state-of-the-art equipment that can work and generate data in any type of bad weather.

Radiosonde data are very useful for weather forecasting with the help of numerical models and, moreover, for pre-monsoon thunderstorm, fog, steering current of cyclone at 200-mb level wind. There are 39 Radiosonde observatories in India and two at Bhubaneswar and Jharsuguda in Odisha.

A 750-gm balloon is used for carrying the 180-gm Radiosonde instrument up to 35-40-km height from surface for providing meteorological data of different levels.