Dehradun, Dec 12 (PTI) The Uttarakhand government on Monday renewed its agreement with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for developing a network of weather stations and strengthening a real-time weather information system in the state for the next five years.

Disaster Management Department Secretary Ranjit Kumar Sinha and Director of Meteorological Centre, Dehradun, Bikram Singh signed the MoU to extend the tenure of the pact for the next five years on behalf of the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority (USDMA) and the IMD respectively.

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The tenure of the agreement has been extended to mitigate rain and weather-related disasters in the state, an official release said.

Under the MoU, the USDMA and the IMD will collaborate in site selection, installation, testing and operation of automatic weather stations, automatic rain gauges, automated snow gauges and compact doppler radars in the state, it said.

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The USDMA will be solely responsible for the upkeep of the equipment and devices installed while the data received from the devices will be sent directly to the IMD's servers for processing.

Along with this, the USDMA will get real time online access to other meteorological instruments installed by the IMD in Uttarakhand.

Through this MoU a central agency is partnering with the state to make effective arrangements for disaster management according to the needs of the state, secretary disaster management Sinha said.

"We now need location specific information. So that wherever there is a possibility of a disaster, the system of disaster management should be alert and ready in advance," he said.

Two radar systems have been installed in the state at Surkanda Devi and Mukteshwar and another radar system is being installed at Lansdowne, Sinha said.

"By strengthening the radar system in the state, location specific information will be available, he said. Location specific information can also be obtained by combining lightning radar and automated doppling radar," he said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)