What Centre Said About Alappuzha Weather Observatory's Closure?

New Delhi: As the closure of the weather observatory in Alappuzha by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has created stalemate over weather forecasting capabilities along Kerala’s coastal areas, the union government in the Lok Sabha said that it is only a “temporary closure”. In response to the Congress MP KC Venugopal‘s question regarding the Alappuzha observatory’s recent closure, Dr Jitendra Singh, Minister of State (Independent) for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences gave this reply in the Parliament.

Stating that it is only a temporary closure in response to the eviction notice issued to the IMD by the Maritime Board in Kerala Minister informed that despite the closure, the Automatic Rain Gauge (ARG) installed in the same location still gives essential weather data, and the office has been using for weather forecasting purposes, thereby not disturbing the forecasting capabilities along Kerala’s coastal areas.

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There are plans to reopen the Alappuzha observatory at a new location. “Meteorological Center (MC)-Thiruvananthapuram has approached the Government of Kerala to provide a suitable site with a building within a 2-3 km radius of the old observatory so that the existing climatological data of the Alappuzha observatory remains relevant and applicable to the new location,” Ministry added.

Continuing further, Minister said that there are no plans for establishing additional weather monitoring stations in the State of Kerala.

“However, the installation process of one X-Band Radar on the campus of Pazhassi College, Pulppally, Wayanad, is progressing as per the timeline. IMD has already established a sufficient number of Automatic Weather Stations/Automatic Rain Gauges/ and Agro-AWS (AWS/ARG/Agro-AWS) networks in the State of Kerala. Also, IMD has already established AWS and ARG networks in sensitive districts, Idukki and Wayanad,” Minister responded.

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The IMD, which started functioning in 1931, has temporarily closed down the observatory on October 29 in the wake of an eviction notice issued by the Port department. Its closure has created great gap in the coastal stretch of the State since it is the only coastal observatory between Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode. The weather data obtained from the observatory play an influential role in weather forecasting for the first two days.