Bihar is going to have a network of its own weather stations for collecting accurate weather related data from across the state and disseminate it among farmers who are directly hit by weather-related events.

The aim of the project is to equip farmers and policy makers with authentic weather related data in time and also use them for better advisory services for the agriculture and allied sectors as well as enhanced early warning system for disaster risk reduction and preparedness.

The proposed system will be the first-of-its-kind for Bihar.

At present, the state government remains dependent on the information provided by the Patna office of the India meteorological department for getting weather related data and forecasts.

The aim assumes significance as Bihar is prone to several kinds of natural disasters among which floods, hailstorms and droughts are very common. Hardly a year passes when one or some other part of the state is not hit by a natural disaster. Bihar, at present, is facing floods and over 1.7 crore population of the state's 19 districts are reeling from flood which, apart from claiming over 500 human lives, has also damaged crops in over 5 lakh hectares of agricultural fields.

The initiative has been taken by the state agriculture department and it has launched a project christened Meghdoot for this purpose.

To begin with, the project is being started on a pilot basis and three districts, Nalanda, Supaul and East Champaran, have been selected for this purpose.

'A fund of Rs 14.86 crore has been earmarked for the pilot project out of which Rs 10 crore has already been released by the department to start the necessary work which has to be completed in the current fiscal (2017-18) itself,' agriculture minister Prem Kumar told The Telegraph. The minister said based on the outcome of the pilot projects, steps would be taken for expanding the footprint of the Meghdoot project across the state in time to come.

The project entails setting up of telemetric weather stations at block level and telemetric rain gauges in all the panchayats. In the pilot project in three districts, 59 telemetric weather stations in blocks and 778 telemetric rain gauges would be set up at panchayat level.

A telemetric weather station collects weather related data like humidity, rainfall, wind speed and direction, temperature and atmospheric pressure using sensors fitted with the weather stations.

A rain gauge measures the amount of rainfall received at a given place in a fixed period of time.

The Meghdoot project also entails setting up a state-of-the-art data centre in Patna where all the weather related data generated by the telemetric weather stations and rain gauges would be received and then relevant data would be disseminated among the decision makers and farmers.

'We are going to hire trained people for running the data centre which would be at the core of the network,' a senior official of the agriculture department, who is closely associated with the Meghdoot project, said.

The network of weather stations would also help in coming up with authentic weather forecast for different areas and these would be based on the information gathered from the ground and the project aims to provide such forecasts ranging from duration of 12 hours to 72 hours.

'Unlike general forecasts, our system would provide several of them and each one would cover around 25 square km of area as far as likely weather conditions are concerned,' said the official and added that the targeted forecast would be disseminated among the farmers of the area concerned through group messaging service and also a network of field officials of the department would be used for disseminating the information.

Given the fact that the department would need modern communication techniques for transferring weather related data from the field to the data centre in Patna, the agriculture department is going to sign a memorandum of understanding with Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, for availing the satellite services for data transmission work.

'Some senior officials of the department would be going to Ahmedabad for signing the MoU,' said the official.