TGDPS weather stations demonstrated ‘exceptional’ coverage of monsoon

Telangana's high-density AWS network provides exceptional monsoon rainfall data, improving reliability and usability for various sectors.

Telangana Development Planning Society (TGDPS) working on the high density Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) spread across the 33 districts during the monsoon months over a period of two years have been found to demonstrate “exceptional coverage” and “density” in all its 1,043 actively reporting stations.

A study conducted by the scientists at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) during the monsoon months from June to September 2020-2022 showed that these high density AWS network have consistently reported daily rainfall data during monsoon.

The weather stations’ network has exhibited exceptional coverage and dependability, with a consistently high number of stations reporting 90% or more of the 122 June-July-August-September days, indicating a robust and reliable network capturing rainfall data across the region (1,042 stations in 2020, 1,043 stations in 2021, and 1,044 stations in 2022), it said.

The districts of Rangareddy, Medchal-Malkajgiri, Hyderabad, Nalgonda and Nizamabad consistently had the highest number of actively reporting AWS stations during monsoon. They are followed by Sangareddy, Khammam, Siddipet and Suryapet districts.

The majority of AWS stations in each district reported rainfall observations for over 90% of the monsoon days, highlighting the effectiveness of the TGDPS-AWS network in capturing rainfall data throughout the season and ensuring consistency in extreme rainfall observations besides showing improvement in data quality and reliability.

A majority of stations fell within the “Regular and Usable” category with a significant decrease in “Irregular” stations across the seasons. During 2020 monsoon, out of 1,043 stations, 843 were classified as “Regular and Usable,” indicating high reliability and usability. Similar trends were observed in the next two years of 2021 and 2022, with an increase in “Regular and Usable” stations and a decrease in “Irregular” stations, said the study.

Most AWS stations were assigned “Flag-1”, indicating relatively good quality and usability of rainfall data, while the distribution of quality flags varied among districts. Real-time daily monitoring and quality checking of AWS stations indicate the regularity and usability of stations for validation purposes in real-time applications.