Muhammad Luqman

With the objective of making the citizens aware of the services rendered by the Pakistan Met Department (PMD) over the last 77 years, the government has planned the country’s first-ever meteorological museum in Lahore. “We are setting up the museum in the building of Lahore’s regional meteorological centre (RMC) that was originally built by the British back in 1866,” PMD Director General Mehr Sahibzada Khan said in an interview with WealthPK.

He said that the establishment of the museum will help preserve the historical building besides displaying the met forecasting technology and equipment of three centuries. Lahore’s observatory was one of around 10 facilities set up by the British Raj in various cities of the Indo-Pak subcontinent, including Lahore, Karachi, Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay, and Madras soon after the outbreak of plague epidemic in the 1860s.

“Initially, the laboratory was set up to assist the health department in assessing the temperature and humidity level in a bid to ascertain their role in the spread of the plague disease,” Mian Ajmal Shad, former chief meteorologist, revealed to WealthPK. Lahore’s observatory was built on present-day jail over three acres of land. But soon after the epidemic of plague receded, it was turned into a meteorological observatory.

Initially, the equipment installed at the Met observatory included the underground moisture recorder for agriculture purposes, thermometers to measure temperature, rain gauge, and wind wanes. “Now the building housing the 1866 observatory has turned into dilapidated premises, closed for several years. The existing Met observatory is housed in a new building,” Shad said. A pilot balloon observatory was added to the initial facility.

It was later converted into a full-fledged RMC. Later, a flood forecasting centre was set up in a newly-constructed building next to RMC with state-of-the-art weather radar. The PMD, at the time of its establishment in 1947, inherited only 15 meteorological observatories, i.e., eight in East Pakistan and seven in West Pakistan, from the central meteorological organisation then operating in the subcontinent. Now, it has expanded the network of meteorological observatories, developing telecommunication facilities and improved forecasting techniques.

In total, there are now around 120 meteorological, airborne and astronomical observatories, including 47 in Punjab and the Islamabad Capital Territory. The Met department has been able to introduce modern flood prediction system, computerised weather forecasting system, and earthquake and nuclear explosion detection system, incorporating radar, satellite, information technology, flight safety, consultancy services in seismic design of dams, buildings and other development and disaster relief schemes.

Other fields in which the meteorological department has conducted research are: climate change, glaciology, renewable energy, arid zone research, ozone measurement, drought monitoring, climate modelling, monsoon onset, solar energy, wind power potential and satellite meteorology. Many of the research organisations, such as Arid Zone Research Institute (AZRI), Space and Upper Atmospheric Corporation (Suparco), and Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), started their operations with the initial assistance of the PMD.

“We are continuously extending meteorological services to Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Federal Flood Commission (FFC), Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Climate Change Division, ministries of religious affairs and national food security,” Muhammad Aslam Chaudhary, a meteorologist, said. The establishment of the museum, he said, is all set to highlight the services of PMD in the field of weather prediction and support to the agriculture, aviation and all other fields of social, defence and economic significance.

Credit: INP-WealthPk