- The Ministries of Earth Sciences and Agriculture have launched a new mobile application called Meghdoot. The app has been developed by by experts from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and Indian Institute of Tropical meteorology and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research
- The mobile app will provide location, and crop and livestock-specific weather-based agro advisories to farmers in local languages. The information would be updated twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays
- It will provide forecast relating to temperature, rainfall, humidity, and wind speed and direction. This information is critical for farmers. The app will also provide advisories to farmers on how to take care of their crops and livestock.
- The app would provide information in the form of images, maps and pictures. It has also been integrated with WhatsApp and Facebook to help farmers share advisories among themselves.
- The app would be available for 150 districts in different parts of the country. It will be extended to rest of the country in a phased manner over the next one year.
- Further, IMD has developed new website to disseminate weather and climate. The website has district-wise weather warnings in easy to view and read formats. It will also act as a centralized portal to all the meteorological offices in India to update the warnings, bulletins and other data in real-time.
