City college launches air surveillance balloon
City-based Vignana Bharathi Institute of Technology successfully launched its balloon experiments for weather prediction on Saturday. Osmania University Vice-Chancellor Prof. Sathyanarayana launched the hydrogen balloon that carried the Imet1 Rsb Meteorological radiosonde.
By collaborating in collecting data, analysing and quantifying different wave activities in the tropical region, this institute forms a triad with the Space Physics Laboratory in Thiruvananthapuram and the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory in Gadanki, which too record atmospheric data such as temperature, air pressure, wind velocity and humidity, using similar balloon technology. “We can aid the meteorological department to significantly increase the accuracy of local weather predictions. Our project has recorded data for as high altitude as 30 km, which has been the best so far in India,” said Prof. Gopa Dutta, director, R&D, VBIT.
The study by balloon, which costs around Rs 16 lakh, is one of two projects at VBIT that are sponsored by Isro, under its Climate And Weather of the Sun-Earth System. The other project, Mini Boundary Layer Mast, is a ground station that measures atmospheric data like wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, pressure etc and could be helpful to farmers.
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