Meteorology plays an extraordinary role in the life of the Indian people. It affects the onset of the monsoon, rainfall, agriculture, drought, famines, storms, public safety, transport, shipping and trade. Scientists in ancient India realised this. Kautilya’s Arthashastra, written in the 3rd century BC, contains records of scientific measurements of rainfall and discussion of their relationship to the country’s revenue and relief work. Virahmihara’s Brihat Samhita, written in the 6th century AD, devotes five chapters to meteorology dealing with clouds, air, rainfall, signs of immediate rainfall, and atmospheric optics. However, the study of India’s weather based on modern scientific principles was introduced by the British. This paper describes how the Indian Meteorological Department came to be founded in 1875, the progress it made during the colonial period, and it briefly considers how it has evolved after independence.
The earliest recorded meteorological measurements in the British era were made by Colonel T D Pearse, whose journal includes daily observations of atmospheric pressure, temperature, relative humidity, direction and force of wind and rainfall from March 1785 to February 1788. The earliest meteorological observatory was started by the East India Company at the Old Madras Tower and the first measurements were made by J Goldingham in 1793.
The second observatory was established at Colaba near Bombay in 1823 and the third at Trivandrum in 1836. In Calcutta, the first observatory was set up at the Surveyor General’s office and V N Rees appointed as its Superintendent in 1829. He recorded meteorological observations from 1829 to 1852 and was appointed the Chief Computer of the Survey of India in 1851. On his retirement the next year, Radhanath Sikdar was appointed the first Indian Superintendent of a government observatory. Radhanath introduced the recording of accurate hourly observations at the Calcutta observatory and meteorological abstracts containing hourly, daily and monthly data for all principal weather parameters appeared regularly in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal from 1853 to 1876. The Journal also published 40 papers by Captain Harry Piddington relating to tropical storms between 1836 and 1855. It was Piddington who came up with the word cyclone, meaning the coil of a snake, in 1842. In the same year he published his monumental work the Laws of Storms. By 1874, there were 77 meteorological observatories in the country.
From the early 1850s, scientifically inclined members of the Asiatic Society sought to establish a committee for standardising meteorological instruments, exchanging data, utilising this information for cyclone and flood disaster management and determining the relationship between diseases and the weather in India. They made representations to the Governor-General and a Sanitation Committee and a Meteorological Committee at the provincial level were established in 1860.
One individual who played a vital role in the development of meteorology in India during this period was Henry Francis Blanford. He had joined the Geological Survey of India in 1855 but had been forced to retire due to ill health in 1862 and took up a chair at the Presidency College, Calcutta. In 1864, he was elected one of the honorary secretaries of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and he began to focus on meteorology. He was greatly influenced by the great Calcutta cyclone of 1864 which killed 40,000 people and he co-authored a report on it. The report gave a very detailed description of the key characteristics of the cyclone and underscored the need for systematic meteorological observations and the importance of establishing a proper system of storm warnings.
A committee to issue storm warnings for the port of Calcutta was set up with Blanford as its secretary. A Bengal Provincial Meteorological Department was established in 1867 and Blanford was appointed Meteorological Reporter to make general meteorological observations and issue storm warnings.
This set-up still had limitations, in that there was no exchange of data or guidance at the national level, and the Asiatic Society reiterated the need for a national meteorological committee. Eventually, the Governor General in Council agreed to form a national committee and the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) was established in 1875 with H F Blanford as its Meteorological Reporter. He was one of the pioneers of scientific meteorology in India. He gave the IMD the paramount role of gathering scientific data regarding Indian meteorology. He expanded the work of observation and centralised the Department to ensure consistency in methods and the tabulation of results. He opened a Central Observatory in Calcutta with photographic self-recording instruments. He increased the number of observatories in the country from 70 to 92.
Director Generals of the IMD since 1875
The primary goals of the department were to conduct a comprehensive study of India’s climate and meteorology as a whole, to use the results to produce weather predictions and to issue timely warnings of cyclonic storms. The first India Daily Weather Report appeared in 1878. After India experienced a severe famine in 1877, the IMD was asked to prepare a seasonal forecast of the South West Monsoon rains. The first operational long range forecast for the Monsoon was issued in June 1886. India became the first country to systematically develop a method for long range forecasting.
Blanford published extensively on meteorology in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal including on ‘Certain Protracted Irregularities of Atmospheric Pressures in Bengal in Relation to Monsoon Rainfall’ and ‘On the Connection of the Himalayan Snowfall with Dry Winds and Seasons of Drought in India’. He started the journal Indian Meteorological Memoirs which published many seminal works on the subject. At the end of his period in charge of the Department, in 1889 he published the main results of his research in his book A Practical Guide to the Climates and Weather of India, Ceylon and Burmah and the Storms of the Indian Seas. At the end of his tenure, he had laid a solid basis for the IMD which was reinforced by subsequent Heads of Department.
Blanford was followed as Director by Sir John Eliot (1889-1903) and Sir Gilbert Walker (1904-1924). Observations from the upper atmosphere commenced with the release of a pilot balloon from Simla in 1905. The collection of data from ships and the transmission of warnings from coastal radio stations in Karachi and Bombay started in 1912. The system of long range forecasting went through several revolutionary phases under their charge and generations of Indian researchers began to make their contributions. Walker deserves the credit for linking the monsoon with global meteorological parameters and for his discovery of the so called Southern Oscillation Phenomenon. Later, the term ‘Walker Oscillation’ was adopted to describe the East-West vertical circulation in the equatorial planes in his honour.
The successive headquarters of the IMD: Alipore, Calcutta (1875), Poona (1928), Delhi (1944), Modern Delhi (1976)
After the First World War, more Indians were appointed to the IMD. Indeed, Blanford had recognised the need to appoint Indians; he appointed the first of them, Lala Ram Sahni in 1884 and Lala Hemraj in 1886. Indianisation was accelerated under Walker and further boosted by Sir C W B Normand, who was Director-General from 1928 to 1944. Agricultural Meteorology started in 1931 under Dr L A Ramdas. The first Indian Director-General was Dr S J Banerjee in 1944. By the end of the War, the IMD was one of the few government departments with many senior positions filled by Indians.
There have been many innovations in the operations of the IMD since independence. There were major advances in its observational capabilities with the introduction of radar in 1954 to support aviation monitoring and, for tracking storms, the first wind-finding radar installation in Dum Dum in the same year. The 1950s also saw the beginning of advanced Numerical Weather Prediction research. The USA launched the TIROS – 1 satellite in April 1960 and a receiver was built at IMD Colamba to receive satellite imagery from the satellite. This facilitated cyclone tracking as well as the study of monsoon, clouds, and circulation features. Following the Bhola cyclone which killed 300,000 people in Bangladesh in 1970, Cyclone Warning Centres were established, and 11 Cyclone Detection Radar Centres were installed to cover the entire east and west coasts of the subcontinent. A directory of satellites was formed to receive images from foreign satellites. Regular reception of satellite imagery commenced in 1984. The National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting was established in 1984 and India obtained its first super-computer in 1989. A Cyclone Warning Directorate was established in 1990. The failure to forecast the Odisha super cyclone in 1999 led to the installation of new tools and technology like the first Doppler Weather Radar in Chennai in 2002. In the period 2007-2102, forecasting transitioned from analogue and subjective to a Decision Support System on a digital platform. This enabled 3-day forecasts in 2009 and 5-day forecasts in 2013. From modest beginnings in 1875, by 2023 the IMD could boast of 39 Doppler weather radars to enable more accurate predictions of extreme weather events across the country.
Given that the understanding of meteorology plays such an important role in monsoon predictions, disaster preparedness and mitigation, climate change monitoring, aviation, energy and water resource management, it is not surprising that the 100th, 125th and the 150th anniversaries of the IMD have been lavishly commemorated in India. The 150th anniversary celebrations commenced with a curtain-raiser in January 2024 attended by the Vice-President of India, where the Director-General, Dr M Mohapatara, described the evolution of meteorological services since 1875. A souvenir, IMD Celebrating 150 Years of Service to the Nation was issued. On the 150th anniversary itself, January 14 2025, the Prime Minister, Mr Modi, attended a celebration at the headquarters of the IMD in Delhi where he highlighted the IMD’s remarkable journey and noted that its 150-year legacy symbolised India’s progress in modern science and technology.
The Prime Minister also unveiled a commemorative postage stamp and coin. In all the souvenir documents that have been published for these commemorations, the role played by colonial officials in founding the IMD and its subsequent developments prior to independence is acknowledged. The following papers on Blanford were published in the run up to the 150th anniversary: Henry Francis Blanford and the Beginnings of Scientific Meteorology in India, 1874-1889 (2023) by Agnidev Manna, and A Weather in the Empire’s Cap: Henry Francis Blanford & the Indian Meteorological Observatories 1875-1890 (2023) by Oyndrila Sarkar.
Given the commemorations that have taken place in India on the anniversaries of the founding of the Indian Meteorological Department and the credit that has been bestowed on many colonial officials, it is regrettable that there has been no mention of the history of the IMD in the UK.
References
Markham C R (1878) Memoir of the Indian Surveys (W H Allen & Co.)
Sarkar O (2023) A Weather in the Empire’s Cap: Henry Francis Blanford & the Indian Meteorological Observatories 1875 – 1890, Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science, Vol 11, 156-192
Manna A (2023) Henry Francis Blanford and the Beginnings of Scientific Meteorology in India, 1874 – 1889, International Journal of Humanities, Social Science and Management, Vol 3, 187-193
Indian Meteorological Department (2000) 125 Years of Service to the Nation, https://www.imdpune.gov.in/home/125%20years%20of%20service%20to%20the%20%20nation.pdf
Indian Meteorological Department (2025) IMD Celebrating 150 Years of Service to the Nation, https://mausam.imd.gov.in/imd_latest/contents/pdf/SOUVENIR.pdf
