THRIVE is founded by a group of professionals to work for the benefits of rural and tribal communities in Home Lighting, ICT, Education and Health using advanced and innovative technologies

Development Activities: Schools Weather Station Project

Weather monitoring in India

India is an agriculture dependent country where 70% of the people are dependent on agriculture and allied activities. There are huge variations in topography and climatic zones resulting in different rainfall, timing of the rainfall and others.
 

Agriculture planning, monitoring and support need accurate weather data. Central agencies use data from different sources to collect weather data and develop weather forecasts and lend advice to various agencies involved in support operations for agriculture and allied fields.

At present weather monitoring, forecast in India is very inadequate in terms of coverage, quality and its application for day-to-day use by the ultimate beneficiary.

The weather forecast too general and cover many times Lakhs of squire kilometers and looses any sense of practical application to the farmers and others on when they want to decide to seed, spray pesticide or apply water or when to harvest etc.

The main reasons for this lacuna are the centralized weather monitoring systems (Hyderabad or Bombay), lack of weather conscious field staff, low quality crude manual equipment and others and lack of research discipline. Very few institutions like ICRISAT and others are using digital weather stations.

Weather monitoring as part of the school education
Weather monitoring/forecasting is a very practical science subject. The subject practices in its right spirit will inculcate a sense of research discipline, observation and analytical skills.
 

THRIVE has introduced this practical subject in schools and help develop an accurate log of decentralized weather data throughout the country apart from fulfilling the learning and research objectives as above to the school children.

Main features of the scheme are

• Simple inexpensive automatic digital wireless weather instruments are deployed in  5 high schools in Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh or India. The present digital models work wirelessly and broadcast data to the control panel inside from the outside rain gauge and other instruments set. The rain gauge and other instruments do not need emptying, manual measuring and others. They auto empty themselves and use solar power to send data to the control panel inside.
   

• These instruments are very sophisticated but cost very reasonable. The low cost is possible due to the higher volumes of production and use of integrated chips.
   

• If these weather stations are installed in say a 1000 schools in a state like Andhra Pradesh, and students record the logs, it is possible to develop accurate weather patterns for the whole state. (This is not done till now by any agency.
   

• It is possible for the local farmers to visit the school/alternatively get to know the weather forecast though the kids (his or neighbor) and get himself apprised the weather forecast for the day/two days etc.^{1
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