The continuous and accurate monitoring of wind speed and direction is of utmost importance to weatherman, particularly during the cyclonic storms.  Wind monitoring also helps the meteorologists in tracking the cyclone accurately and estimating their devastating potential.  One major disadvantage of all the existing wind monitoring and storing systems is their huge consumption of power, and hence are not suitable during cyclonic storms due to mains power supply failure.  So an attempt has been made by the authors to design and develop a low cost, low power, more accurate and maintenance free High Wind Speed Recording (HWSR) System for the coastal meteorological observatories along the East and West Coasts of India. One such system after successful field trials have been installed at Meteorological Office, Puri in the Orissa coast, and 19 more stations are proposed along East and West Coasts of India. The system meets the operational accuracy requirements and vector averaging of wind data as recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO, 1992). The system design aspects and scope for expansion have been presented in this paper.

There is an urgent need for modernisation of aeronautical meteorological instruments considering the exponential growth of aviation industry in India.  As a part of modernization, an attempt has been made by the authors to design and develop an Integrated Automated Current Weather Instruments System (IACWIS) for the continuous monitoring of wind direction and speed, temperature and dew point at the touchdown zone of the runway. This system being digital has a lot of advantages such as vector averaging  for wind direction and  wind speed, data archival and amenable for further analysis etc. The system after successful field trials has been installed at seven international airports in the country (Bangalore, Calicut, Diu, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Nagpur and New Delhi). The system meets the operationally desirable accuracy  requirements of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO, 2004) and vector averaging of wind data as recommended by World Meteorological Organisation (WMO, 1992). The system design capabilities and scope for expansion have been presented in this paper.

The existing self recording instruments of India Meteorological Department (IMD) urgently require modernization by considering the demand for its real time interface with the modern now-casting tools like Doppler Weather Radar (DWR), real time weather models etc. Hence IMD has designed and developed a state-of-the-art Digital Automatic Recording System (DARS) for the automatic measurement, storage, display and communication of meteorological parameters like Atmospheric pressure, Wind speed, Wind direction, Air temperature, Relative humidity and Rainfall. The system has its origin from the existing IMD make High Wind Speed Recording (HWSR) System installed at more than 15 coastal observatories in the eastern coast of India, by suitable integration with different types of electronic meteorological sensors available in the global market. Authors have participated at various stages of design, development, installation, and data validation of the system. This paper highlights the design aspects of indigenous system and its data quality with respect to imported AWS and ground truth observations and the proposal for its installation at selected villages in a district to study the spatial variation of Wind and Rainfall during Monsoon period.