India Launches First SkyCast Aviation Weather Monitoring System at IGI Airport

Key facts

• Union Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Dr. Jitendra Singh inaugurated India’s first SkyCast aviation weather monitoring system at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in New Delhi.
• Developed under the Mission Mausam initiative of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), the system makes India the 19th country in the world to deploy an integrated aviation weather monitoring system.
• The system integrates technologies including Radar Wind Profiler, SODAR, Microwave Radiometer, Ground-based Fog Aerosol Spectrometer (GFAS), and CL61 Lidar-based Ceilometer to monitor atmospheric conditions up to nearly three kilometres.
• The scientific foundation of SkyCast emerged from the Winter Fog Experiment (WiFEX), launched jointly by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) in 2015.
• Following the launch at IGI Airport, the next SkyCast facility will be established at Jewar Airport in Uttar Pradesh.