Abstract
IN the Report on the Administration of the Meteorological Department of the Government of India in 1934-35 (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1935), an account is given of an important change in the arrangements for dealing with the increasing meteorological requirements of aviation along the trans-India air route. In previous years, a separate forecast had been issued to each aircraft in respect of the route covered by it each day from the forecasting centre concerned; but it became evident that it would soon be impossible for the two centres at Karachi and Calcutta to continue to do this for the four thousand miles of the route between Bahrein and Victoria Point. Arrangements were therefore made to broadcast forecasts for each section of the route regularly at fixed times, and to distribute data relating to upper winds and cloud height by wireless from pilot balloon stations along the trans-India route twice daily. The Agricultural Meteorology Branch carried out a number of researches, mainly at the Central Agricultural Meteorological Observatory, Poona; instruments for the study of micro-climatology were designed and tested, and a number of papers were written dealing with the correlation between meteorological conditions in the open and among growing crops; researches into evaporation, percolation and effective rainfall were also made. Experiments on the effect on soil temperature of a thin covering of soil of different colours and from different districts showed that coverings of certain soils had a big effect on the climate of the soil beneath. Other investigations were made into the albedo of different types of soil and vegetation. The scheme of crop-weather precision observations was applied to wheat and jowar at Poona, to rice at Karjat and to bajri at Baroda. The study of frost damage and methods of preventing it was also included in this branch's activities. The Upper Air Observatory at Agra released seventy-seven sounding balloons with recording instruments, and nearly half of these were recovered.
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Meteorology in India. Nature 138, 70 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138070a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138070a0