Meteorological Datasets

Since 2007 when this application was first made available, we have received a large number of comments, thank you notes, and critiques regarding the Met data in the dataset. We publish a selection of these below, believing it would be useful to the wider audience.
There are several instances where we have seen the met. data in this application to be varying sometimes widely from other available met data. We suggest that the users to use the data with some caution and checks and to also the background paper from Mitchell, Jones et. al., on the creation of the global dataset.

We welcome further comments and suggestions regarding making more and better met data available online.

India Water Portal team

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I m not questioning the authencity of data and i have also read the paper by Mitchell and Jones. The important thing to know for us to clarify whether Mitchell and Jones used the station level data from India or not, while doing the analysis. Let me cite one paragraph from a research report of National Climate Center, 2008.

Global scale gridded monthly temperature data set (New et al, 2000, Jones and Moberg, 2003) are available to the research
community for more than ten years. The data set of Jones and Moberg (2003) forms a basis for the assessment of temperature trends by IPCC for climate assessment reports and by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) for the annual climate
statements. Regional gridded daily temperature data sets are also available for different regions including China (Feng et al. 2004), and the USA (Janowiak et al. 1999 and Piper and Stewart 1996). Recently, Caesar et al. (2006) reported the
development of a new daily temperature gridded data set for the globe. The data set contained daily temperature in 2.50 latitude by 3.750 longitude grid over the period January 1946 to December 2000. The primary source of station data for this data set
is the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily (GHCND). However, this data set does not contain any data from the Indian region. (NCC research report 8, June, 2008)

As far as i have read the paper by Mitchell their main source of data is also GHCND and some more addition.

So i asked the question.

To check the data i compared rainfall data from India Water Portal Source and Season And Crop Report, Govt Of India which is based on IMD station data for three years of two districts in Andhra Pradesh. I found that in some cases data are similar or varying marginally. But in some other points there are huge gaps between data for example difference of 50 Mm or more of rainfall. So this difference of rainfall can make a lot of difference on crop productivity and growth. This point becomes important when i m looking at the societal vulnerability to climate change.

I don't question the authenticity of the source, i only wanted to know how far this data is similar to data provided by IMD and how useful these data are when doing vulnerability analysis to climate change.

I apologize if anything wrong i wrote in the process of discussion. Thank you for sharing ur ideas with me.

Thanks to Arghyam for maintaining this portal, which is playing a significant role in terms of providing free data to the public.

Regards,
Architesh

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this is really an excellent resource! i wonder if i may make a request though: i'm working on a project that requires time series information on yearly rainfall for all the districts in india for the period 1975-present, and i couldn't find a way to download this easily in an excel file. could you please help me out?thankschari

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Please update with latest data till 2008 rainfall.

alok gawande

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I tried India water portal, but it gives monthly averages. I need annual maximum daily series. (the maximum daily rainfall in each year) If you know any procedure to try this, please let me know.
Thanks for your kindness.

Best regards,

Kumari

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I need information on days when it was raining in Dibang District of Arunachal Pradesh from 2001 November till April 2005. How and from where can i get this
Manish Jaggi

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My compliments to all the people who have worked on your website to generate the detail needed for research. I am working on a paper that analyzes the determinants of infant mortality using household asset data. India is amongst one of the countries. For the methodology we would also like to include monthly precipitation data and although this data is available on your website by district this would require me to go through the same steps for each and every district. I am wondering whether you have this data available in any format from 1970 to 2002 (and beyond if more recent data is available). This would save me a lot of time trying to download the data from the website by each district.

Many thanks in advance,

Ellen Tan

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Dear Sir,First, I would like to sincerely appreciate the development of Meteorological Datasets for India using CRU datasets.Since we wanted to analyse long term meteorological data in GIS over India and therefore started looking your webpage vs CRU original datasets. We have noticed that after selecting a cell at http://www.indiawaterportal.org/mapguide/MetData/ajaxtiledviewersample.jsp)the monthly data it displays is half degree displayed (in both directions) as compare to original datasets (available at CRU site). This error can further be checked when one retrive data of costal areas where their are edges of India boundary. Your datasets always retrive 'no data' whereas we have noticed that in the original datasets there are data. We think that this is just becuase of half degree shift (in both directions) during data retrival from original database of CRU.I therefore request you kindly check at your end and then corrected version may kindly be provided to world user community.Thanking you,YoursDr. Arun K. Saraf,Professor,Department of Earth Sciences,Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee,ROORKEE - 247667, India

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Dear All,I wish to know how reliable is the data avaliable on the portal http://www.indiawaterportal.org/data/metdata/Researchers at IITB would like to use/verify the data.Is it that the recorded data was provided to Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and they did further cleaning and processing of the data.Please clarify as early as possible.Kind Regards,Durgadas
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I am very interested in the annual rainfall totals for Rajasthan that you have posted on your waterportal.Can you please advise: (1)Where these data are derived from - such as India Met Dept, Irrigation Dept, or some other network, and (2) whether this data is 'as received' or checked for errors (such as inclusion of part year as a whole year record).Thanks.Gordon Stanger
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Thanks, this is great service. I think the district wise availability is better than the grid wise. But if you can make it sub district wise data available that would be even better.

The data after 2002 is not available, which is a pity. I guess the latest data can be obtained from other sources more easily, but it if it were available at the site that would be even better.

Himanshu Thakkar

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Hi
It is not clear whether precipitation showed in the graphs includes both rain and snow. For example if I want to know precipitation in a grid block in the Himalayan area, it shows total precipitation. Should I consider this data as precipitation including both snow and rain or only rain.
Dr Pratap Singh

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I have just had a look at this and have found this quite useful. It is rather convenient to download data in excel sheets. Those of you who use such data regularly may kindly give your suggestions. I can see that it is easily possible for people to get comparisons for their regions and analyse impact of climate change through this.

Shambu Prasad

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I had the following idea :

1. Process the rainfall data i.e arrange the monthly rainfalls (would prefer at least 30 years because as per statistics it gives creditbility in arriving at the models) in ascending order. Figure out the decile values and then compare it with the current years monthly rainfall data to know the rainfall status. It could be a useful tool for Government in declaring drought and channelize resources accordingly.

2. Again there is a possibility of using the GIS and providing the status as on date, which again will be quite useful.

Regards

Bharavi Mishra

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1. The precipitation data would be useful to our purpose (we're speaking J&K specific here) if it were bifurcated into snowfall and rainfall data
2. The data on ground frost does not mention units of measurement
3. We have data upto 2002 only - with all the climate changes in recent years, it would be really helpful to get more recent data
With Regards,
Ajita Kini

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It's a very good website. The data is definitely useful to us.
The only drawback I found is that, you can get the data for a predefined range of area and not at exact location.
Another suggestion is that the map needs some detailing w.r.t. rivers, places, etc. so that selection of area becomes easy.

With Regards

Rajendra Deshpande