Mini Met labs on school rooftop

Updated on: Monday, November 23, 2009

Kolkata: Children will study the weather daily, collect data and compute them for a year in 75 schools across the state.
They will prepare localised weather reports that will be presented to the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India after a year.

This is part of a special project that has been assigned to schools to study if the findings at a micro level are vastly different from data provided by the regional meteorological departments.

Four weather stations have been set up in city schools, the remaining are in the 19 districts of the state, at least 25 km apart from each other, following a DST norm to help get more accurate data about regional variations.

It is only within the city that this norm has not been followed because the variations are far greater inside the city.

The project has been floated by the Science Communicators’ Forum (SCF). It was the SCF that suggested to the DST that weather stations be set up in schools all over the state where children can take daily weather readings, just as the Alipore meteorological office does and these readings can finally lead to interesting localised findings.

DST has granted nearly Rs 50 lakh for setting up the weather stations.

The four city schools where these weather stations have been set up are Loreto Sealdah, Ballygunge Government High School, Laban Hrad Vidyapeath (Salt Lake) and Ananda Ashram (Naktala).

The mini Earth care station — as the weather station is being called — has a rain gauge, an anemometer and a Stevenson’s Screen — the instruments found in any weather office.

Take the weather station that has been set up atop the terrace at Loreto Sealdah. Girls of classes VIII-X have been handling it as part of their geography lessons.

Naturally, the findings of the students vary from what the Alipore weather office provides because the readings the latter provides is an average for the whole city.

It was relevant during the British times, experts feel, because those days pollution level was low and the factors affecting weather were more or less uniform.

SCF will provide a report of the project to the DST after a year and if the latter finds the project successful, it will start the project across the country.

Mini Met labs on school rooftop

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