National Report of India for the

3rd International ‘PMOs’ Workshop
(23-24 March,2006)

by

S.K.Prasad

India Meteorological Department

Pune, India

Objectives

1.To enhance weather observations on real time & delayed mode on high seas for climatologists and modellers by recruiting ‘Indian Voluntary Observing Fleets’ (IVOF) and equipping them with basic equipments, its installations , logistic support etc.

2.Providing weather observers with sufficient training and building their capacity to take observations accurately and timely.

3.Periodically inspection of these VOFs,collecting weather logbooks and CDs for scrutiny and & to provide weather forecasts and other climatological normalsto the marine communities including oil exploration on sea

4.To warn against severe weather phenomena like tropical cyclones,strong winds, sea and swell waves on high seas as well as in coastal region

5.Advising Port authorities to hoist storm warning signals at ports during adverse weather and passing off current weather bulletins for their information and necessary action

6.Providing GMDSS bulletins and other meteorological inputs during SEARCH & RESCUE operations including MPERSS on high seas and in coastal areas additionally on demand

1. Network of Port Meteorological Offices

India has a coastline of more than 6ooo kms.In all, there are 6 port meteorological offices, 3 along the west coast( Mumbai, Goa, Kochi )

and 3 along the east coast ( Chennai, Visakhapatanam, Kolkata ), managed by 6 full time officers.These officers are well trained in general meteorology , forecasting and inspection job and thus make a good liaison with the marine communities in their respective assignments. The location of the PMOs including sea area bulletins for merchant shipping and coastal weather area are shown in the map A, below.

2. Indian Voluntary Observing Fleets Inspection

During last 3 years, the statistics of ship inspected, number of logbook collected, barometer compared and ship recruitment is given below.

Year	Ships Visited	No. of Log collected	No. of Barometer Compared	No. of Ships Recruited
2003	582	71	594	14
2004	641	98	554	6
2005	689	51	732	5

3. Foreign Ships Visited

In 2005, the statistical report of foreign ship’s visit monthwise is given below.In all, 380 foreign ships were visited by all the 6 PMOs.

PMO	JAN	FEB	MAR	APR	MAY	JUN	JUL	AUG	SEP	OCT	NOV	DEC	TOTAL
CAL	3	6	7	5	4	6	6	5	2	2	8	5	59
MDS					2			1	5		4	3	15
CHN	4	7	5	4	7	5	4	4	4	1	4	2	51
GOA	6	5	3	7	7	8	9	6	9	8	8		76
BMB	10	12	13	5	12	3	5	6	5	10	14	10	105
VSK	4	5	1	7	7	10	15	3	3	4	7	8	74
													380

4. Marine Meteorological Data Management

• Recording of marine met observations on board by all the ships in special met registers (logbooks)

• Collection of logbooks by 6 Port Meteorological Officers from ships recruited by its PMOs.

• Manual scruitiny of logbooks before transfer of observations on magnetic tape in a standard internally agreed format

• Minimum Quality Control Check of observations stored on magnetic tape as well as of those observations received on floppies/diskette.

• Supply of marine data to the GCCs quarterly, after application of quality control check.

5. Excellent Awards to IVOF(Every year on 5th April )

· Excellent awards in the form of a citation and books worth INR 30,000 (on science ,adventure, health and yoga etc ) for overall excellent performance of about 25 ships every year.

· Cash Prizes to the first three ships, two prizes for overall excellent performance and one for providing realtime valuable weather observations during cyclonic storms in the region every year.

6. Suspect ships data and action taken

Marine Division receives suspect ship reports regularly from WMO. The ships, which have recorded doubtful weather observations, are communicated through shipping company or through e-mail. IVOF ships are recording weather observations satisfactorily .A few ships with doubtful weather observations are noticed and remedial action are taken subsequently .through e-mail.

7. First National workshop for PMOs

The first national workshop for the PMOs in India was organized for 3 days during 12 to 14 May, 2004 at the Central Training Institute of IMD at Pune to equip PMOs with the latest knowledge in the marine meteorology and new observational/ recording techniques.There were 12 participants.In all, there were 17 different subtopics, which are mentioned in the table below.The expert instructors were drawn from various sources.

1	STORM WARNING SIGNALS
2	National Data Buoy Programme
3	SafetyNet/ NAVTEX Systems In Marine Meteorological Data Exchange
4	Preliminary Scientific Results from VOSClim Project
5	Global Marine Distress Safety System (GMDSS)
6	Voluntary Observing Ships (VOS ) Scheme & VOSClim Project
7	Port Meteorological Office Services of a National Meteorological Service (NMS) Organisation
8	Automation 0f Surface Marine Observations
9	Ship Recruitment and Inspection Procedure
10	Insat data collection system
11	Sea wave / swell wave prediction
12	Upkeep and Calibration of Marine Meteorological Instruments
13	Global Monitoring Of Marine Surface Observations / Monthly Suspect list and Actions to be initiated
14	Marine Meteorology and the Shipping Industry
15	IMD’s Marine Meteorological services : Role of Port Meteorological officers
16	Value of Marine Meteorological observations for forecasters/Numerical modelers
17	Practical on the Job Training about use of software (Turbowin)

8. Status of Ship Recruitment

Year	Selected	Supplementary	Auxiliary	Vosclim
2003	-	8	-	18
2004	-	6	-	3
2005	-	4	-	-

No of ships decommissioned in different categories

Year	Selected	Supplementary	Auxiliary	Vosclim
2003	-	5	-	-
2004	-	6	-	-
2005	-	5	-	-

9. Installation of Turbowin software

As on date, 28 ships are equipped with Turbowin software for automation in weather observation recording.The logbook scrutiny is being done manually and through automation also before archieval.About 2611 observations in electronic forms were also received during 2005 ,which were also scrutinised electronically .

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