New Delhi, April 30 : On the lines of Urban Meteorological Services for Delhi-NCR, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Saturday announced to start similar services for 50 cities in a year's time. Speaking about the urban heat island effect and how advance warnings about the local area weather conditions vis-A-vis urban landscape can help people be better prepared in their own areas, IMD director general (Meteorology) Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said, "IMD had started Urban Meteorological Services for Delhi that gives localised readings. We plan to start similar service for 50 more stations in one year." This will help the authorities concerned and the general public to take informed decisions and suitable measures for weather and air quality related events. The IMD plans to start these services first for metro cities Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bengaluru in the first phase and then the remaining capital cities. "We hope we are able to launch these all in this coming year," he said. For now, like Delhi, it would be available only as a web portal and only later, there would be an App for it as part of the modified Mausam App that the IMD currently has. On July 30, 2021, the Urban Meteorological Services for Delhi-NCR was launched to provide an integrated Early Warning System through a web portal and an App. It provides current weather observations, current air quality observations, weather forecast, air quality forecast, district-wise weather warnings and a Nowcast (forecast applicable for next three hours) too. The real time weather (Temperature, Relative Humidity, Rainfall, Wind Speed and Wind Direction) and air quality information (PM10, PM2.5, Ozone and Air Quality Index) are collected from monitoring stations of different institutions in Delhi and NCR and presented in a graphical form in the webpage so that hotspots can be identified easily. /IANS