History
In 1686, Edmond Halley published his treatise on the Indian summer monsoon, which he attributed to a seasonal reversal of winds due to the differential heating of the Asian land mass and the Indian Ocean. The first meteorological observatories were established in India by the British East India Company. These included the Calcutta Observatory in 1785, the Madras Observatory in 1796 and the Colaba Observatory in 1826. Several other observatories were established in India during the first half of the 19th century by various provincial governments.
The Asiatic Society, founded in Calcutta in 1784 and in Bombay in 1804, promoted the study of meteorology in India. Captain Harry Piddington published almost 40 papers dealing with tropical storms from Calcutta between 1835 and 1855 in The Journal of the Asiatic Society. He also coined the term cyclone, meaning the coil of a snake. In 1842, he published his landmark thesis, Laws of the Storms.
After a tropical cyclone hit Calcutta in 1864, and the subsequent famines in 1866 and 1871 due to the failure of the monsoons, it was decided to organize the collection and analysis of meteorological observations under one roof. As a result, the Indian Meteorology Department was established in 1875. Henry Francis Blanford was appointed the first Meteorological Reporter of the IMD. In May 1889, Sir John Eliot was appointed the first Director General of Observatories in the erstwhile capital, Calcutta. The IMD headquarters were later shifted to Shimla in 1905, then to Pune in 1928 and finally to New Delhi in 1944.
IMD became a member of the World Meteorological Organization after independence on 27 April 1949. The agency has gained in prominence due to the significance of the monsoon rains on Indian agriculture. It plays a vital role in preparing the annual monsoon forecast, as well as in tracking the progress of the monsoon across India every season.
Read more about this topic: India Meteorological Department
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