Watch Tower: The weather mart-II

There are 1,200 privately set up weather stations in India, and the number is increasing- report by Archita Bhatta & Rohini Rangarajan
The companies are penalized for every weather forecast that goes wrong. In case of temperature, for example, the margin of error allowed is one degree. "We are paying a private weather company for accurate forecast data because this data could prevent losses of up to Rs 20 lakh," Jayanta Chatterjee, assistant general manager of NDPL, said. "The price of one unit of power can vary from Rs 1.5 per unit to Rs 15 per unit depending on the demand. We calculate the power required for the next day based on that forecast and buy the power when the demand is still low."
May 28 and May 30, the maximum temperature in Delhi fell from 41°C to 35°C. The cost of a unit of power also fell from Rs 5.5 to Rs 1.08. "Weather conditions play a vital role in demand forecasting," a Reliance Infrastructure official explained.
Being forewarned about the weather also helps prepare for contingencies. When Power Grid Corporation, a public transmission utility, learnt of the high probability of fog last winter through Skymet, it hired helicopters to clean the transmission lines. This helped prevent tripping caused by a combination of fog and pollution. Fog in the presence of pollutants on surface of insulators provides an alternate low resistance path, which causes flashovers and tripping of transmission lines.
The survival of several other businesses is closely linked to advance warnings regarding the weather. Oil rigs, for example. Skymet provides Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) forecast for their offshore rigs. "Along with surface weather parameters we track sea weather-wave, swell, gust, wind-for the oil company," said Jatin Singh, managing director of Skymet. The rigs have to be shut down if there is a cyclone. Otherwise, they may catch fire. Besides, ships ply to and from the rigs transporting oil; the company needs weather data to ensure the safety of these ships.
For other businesses, like weather-based crop insurance, the companies set up automatic weather stations, thus, increasing weather coverage. These stations mainly consist of sensors mounted on a pole. In contrast to manual weather stations, automatic weather stations can measure temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction and rainfall every hour and send the data to computers via cable or satellite.
Companies like National Collateral Management Services Limited (NCMSL) specialize in setting up automatic weather stations. The company was launched in 2004 with the support of several banks like HDFC, Bank of India and Canara Bank; IFFCO and the National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange to provide farmers with warehousing and certificate of crop quality so that they can get low-interest credit from banks. In 2004, weather-based crop insurance was introduced in India. The next year NCMSL diversified and started setting up automatic weather stations.
Srinivas Rao, vice-president, NCMSL, said the company has set up 400 weather stations across 16 states in India. It charges between Rs 1,000 and Rs 10,000 per month for the data. For data to be supplied every 10 minutes, the price is the highest: Rs 10,000 per month.
"When a company wants data for a particular place we set up stations only if an IMD station is not there. We complement the IMD," said Rao, who imports these stations from the US. Each automatic weather station costs between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.5 lakh, depending on the type of data required. But INGEN, a sister company of Weather Risk Management and Services, prefers to build its own stations, which comes to Rs 25,000 each.
There are 1,200 privately set up weather stations in India, and the number is increasing. Rao has orders to set up 50 more stations within July. ICICI Bank's weather-based crop insurance scheme works around weather stations. "We buy weather data like temperature, rainfall, wind speed and wind direction from IMD and private companies like NCMSL and INGEN as these help us verify our claims," said Aditya Jain of ICICI -Rural that provides crop insurance in 15 states. Once the weather conditions cross or fall short of laid down parameters for a crop, the farmer can raise a claim.
ICICI Bank has grape cultivators in Maharashtra 's Pune-Sangli-Nashik belt as clients. Grape farmers choose the crop phases they want to cover and also the location of weather station used for calculating the claim. They get weather updates from the forecasters the bank subscribes to. India 's farmers are still not direct clients of private forecasters.
Increasing unpredictability of weather is another reason private forecasters are flourishing, Anuj Khambhat, director of Weather Risk Management and Services, believes. "More farmers are availing of insurance because of frequent crop loss due to frequent changes in weather," he said. Insurance firms, therefore, need more weather stations.
News channels form another major market for weather forecasting companies. Attractively packaged weather-related data is good business. Today 70 per cent of the business generated by weather forecasting companies comes from media houses-both television and print.
"We take weather forecasts from private companies because it comes as a map with graphics, which is more suitable to us," said a Zee News executive. "There is less hassle in packaging the information at our end." If packaging drove media companies from IMD to private weather forecasting companies, power distribution companies switched mainly because private forecasters provided data more frequently. India certainly needs to improve forecasting infrastructure.
IMD's modernization plan includes increasing the density of its automatic weather stations. In 2007-08, the Centre sanctioned a Rs 950-crore plan, under which 550 automatic weather stations, 55 Doppler radars for data on clouds, and 3,600 rain gauges will be installed across the country. Of these, 125 automatic weather stations have been set up.
But even these installations will not be enough. An IMD official said regional changes are so palpable that every district needs at least four stations, which means a total of about 25,000 stations. "At present, we have installations at a distance of 100 km each. But we definitely need more," AB Majumdar, scientist at IMD Pune, said.
With more companies entering the business of weather forecasting there are fears of weather forecasting gradually turning into a paid service altogether-the US came close to privatising its public weather forecaster in the early 1980s. The mention of increasing private business to IMD officials tends to get their hackles up. For forecasting one needs historical data and current observations, Majumdar explained. "Nobody has either the infrastructure to record as many observations as IMD or the historical data," he said. "Accuracy depends on infrastructure. If somebody is claiming that he is giving better predictions than IMD, he is lying," said another official. At the same time, he added, while general forecasting is IMD's responsibility, private agencies would do a better job of providing customized forecast data.
The growth of the private industry can, however, spur IMD to upgrade its services. The World Meteorological Organisation says "no single government or agency has the necessary resources to address all the challenges on its own". It encourages public forecasters to work with international agencies, other organizations, academia, the media and the private sector to improve the range and quality of critical environmental information and services. At the same time capabilities of the national weather forecaster need to be upgraded since with changing weather pattern India 's millions of farmers will need free forecasts more than ever before.