Kathmandu, July 10 : The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology has been releasing radiosonde balloons worth Rs 20,000 on a daily basis to improve the credibility of the weather prediction in the country.
Aimed at making weather forecasting cent per cent accurate, the Department under the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation had started releasing the instrument that collects and transmit data from remote places from June 20.
Such hydrogen-filled balloons are released from Kirtipur in Kathmandu at 5:30 am, shared Department’s Director General Dr Rishi Ram Sharma.
According to Sharma, those balloons lift the connected sensor to the stratosphere for gathering weather condition in the atmosphere reaching as high as 31.6 kilometre above the sky and relay the data on temperature, pressure, wind direction and speed, relative humidity, cosmic rays in the atmosphere among others back to the station by 9 am.
The radiosonde balloons fly up at the speed of 6 meters per second while descends at the rate of 3 metres per seconds on average.
The Department is currently collecting the data and working in the part of software to upgrade its 73-hour based old short-range weather forecasting system to numeric weather prediction system by this year thus enabling weather forecasting possible for seven days.
Weather radar installation expedited
The Department, in a bid to streamline weather forecasting system in the country, has accelerated the process of installation of weather radar for the first time.
Director General Sharma shared that such radar will be installed in Rata Nangla of Surkhet within four months Siddikot of Palpa and Nametar of Udayapur will see installation of the radar gradually for the early weather forecast.
In Surkhet, the radar each costing Rs 20 million, will be installed in aid of the Asian Development Bank while in rest of the places, the government of Nepal will bear the expenses for putting in place the radars.
Sharma is of the view that the early weather forecast would contribute towards aviation safety and minimizing the natural disasters.
The Department has been obtaining information from automatic seasonal equipment installed in various 120 places across the country. The Department plans to install 180 more such equipment in future in an attempt to revamp the weather forecasting system.
