IMD: India’s weather tracker turns 150 years old

School students take part in an event marking the 150th anniversary of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) in Chennai.
| Photo Credit: ANI

On January 15, 2025, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) will turn 150 years old.

The organisation was set up by the provincial British government in the country in 1875 and its first (Imperial) Meteorological Reporter was Henry Francis Blanford. The IMD’s genesis can be traced to the importance of the monsoons over South Asia and the formation and effects of cyclones from the Indian Ocean.

Its formation was particularly accelerated by the 1864 Calcutta cyclone, which devastated the city and left more than 60,000 people dead, and the Orissa famine that followed just two years later because the monsoons had failed. So the government at the time decided to funnel weather data collected around the country into a single set of records, managed by a bespoke organisation. This organisation was the IMD.

It was originally headquartered in Calcutta but by 1944 had moved to New Delhi. In independent India, the IMD became a member of the World Meteorological Organisation in 1949.

The IMD currently operates six Regional Meteorological Centres, a Meteorological Centre in every State capital, plus a panoply of centres for various meteorological services. Aside from tracking and studying phenomena like rainfall and cyclones, the IMD helps record earthquakes and atmospheric pollution and generates alerts and warnings about impending anomalous weather.

It also maintains a complicated communications system that collects data from a variety of sources, including ground observatories, naval vessels, atmospheric balloons, and satellites.