Atmospheric Research Testbed in Central India (ART-CI)

About Us

The Atmospheric Research Testbed – Central India (ART-CI) is a premier observational facility established by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), located at Silkheda village in Sehore District, Madhya Pradesh. Positioned strategically in the heart of the monsoon core zone, ART-CI aims to address longstanding data gaps and improve understanding of monsoon convection, cloud microphysics, land-atmosphere interactions, and boundary layer processes that influence rainfall variability in Central India.

Given the strong correlation between rainfall variability over Central India and the all-India summer monsoon, ART-CI serves a critical role in enhancing large-scale predictability. The facility is equipped with an extensive suite of cutting-edge remote sensing and in-situ instruments—including dual-polarization C-band and Ka-band radars, wind profilers, radiometers, ceilometers, disdrometers, radiosondes, a 72-m meteorological tower, and advanced aerosol and radiation monitoring systems. These provide high-resolution, continuous observations across diurnal, synoptic, seasonal, and interannual timescales.

ART-CI plays a key role in validating and improving numerical weather prediction and climate models, particularly in addressing model biases such as the misrepresentation of diurnal convection and dry rainfall bias in Central India. The concurrent, co-located measurements enable generation of critical atmospheric profiles, hydrometeor classification, cloud structure, and vertical velocity fields necessary for process-level studies and parameterization improvement.

Functioning as both a long-term observatory and an open-science platform, ART-CI supports national and international research collaborations, intensive field campaigns, training programs, and model evaluation studies. The insights and datasets generated from ART-CI are expected to significantly contribute to advancing monsoon forecasting capabilities and climate resilience strategies for India.

Background

Objectives

To establish an Atmospheric Research Testbed in Central India (ART-CI) for better understanding on processes governing monsoon convection and land-atmosphere interactions over the monsoon core region and to measure relevant meteorological parameters using the state-of-the-art observational systems.
To organize intense observational campaigns along with weather prediction model runs for testing hypotheses and to improve physical parameterizations in the models related to convection and land surface processes. There is an urgent need to understand more on monsoon convection, its diurnal variation and land-atmosphere interactions.
Outreach, Training and Dissemination of ART-CI data sets. The testbed will be made into an international facility for intense observational campaigns and testing physical parameterization schemes including sensitivity runs. The data will be used to test/validate/constrain numerical model in improving predictions of intense convective storms, high impact mesoscale weather events which are predominantly observed over this region and have major societal implications. The data collected at this facility will be shared for research to national/international scientific community within the data policy of the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

ARTCI Facilities

Observational Facilities at ART:

Dual-pol C-band Doppler Weather Radar was set up in June 2021 and has been operational since then.
Microwave Radiometer, Disdrometer, and Micro Rain Radar were also installed and operational to understand the physics of precipitation. 
Ka-band cloud radar and Ceilometer are functional to study the cloud characteristics and cloud-to-rain transition in central India.
Several aerosol measurements, such as SMPS, ACSM, Nephelometer, Aethelometer, TCA, SP2, CCN counter, etc., to characterise the physical and chemical properties of atmospheric aerosols.
A suite of solar radiation sensors including ultraviolet (UV-A, UV-B, and erythemal UV) sensors, a Combined Net Radiometer (CNR), a sun photometer, a whole sky imager, and a sunshine duration sensors were installed to monitor various radiative and atmospheric components. These instruments collectively measure Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI), Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI), Diffuse Horizontal Irradiance (DHI), longwave radiation (LW), net radiation, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), ultraviolet radiation components, sunshine duration, surface albedo, optical aerosol depth and cloud fraction.
A 72-m meteorological tower for the measurement of GHG fluxes at different vertical levels (altitudes).
The radiosonde launch facility has been established and is operational regularly.
Lightning Location Network to precisely locate the lightning and thunderstorms.
Conducting intense observational campaigns with a suite of aerosol, precipitation, and radiation measurements during the monsoon season.

Current status

100 acres of land acquired from Govt of MP in Silkheda village, Sehore District (50 km north west of Bhopal)
Boundary wall and main entrance gate construction completed for 100 acre campus and fencing work is under progress.
33kV HT power sub-station construction under progress. Erection of external poles to main tapping point including overhead lines have been completed.
Dual-pol C-band Doppler Weather Radar is set up in June 2021 and has been operational since then.
In addition, Microwave Radiometric Profiler, Disdrometer, Ceilometer and Micro Rain Radar were also installed and operational.

Publications

U. M. Krishna, Das, Subrata Kumar, and J. N. Victor, “Atmospheric drivers of post-monsoon and winter thunderstorms in central India,” Science of The Total Environment, vol. 979, p. 179 432, 2025.
M. Tupsoundare, S. M. Deshpande, Z. Feng, Das, Subrata Kumar, M. Deshpande, and H. Hanmante, “Spatiotemporal variations in the characteristics of mesoscale convective systems over indian monsoon zone,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, vol. 130, no. 4, e2024JD042344, 2025.
Victor N J, Dube A, Siingh D, Kamra AK. Impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on zonal variability of lightning activity over the Indo-Gangetic Plains, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, doi: 10.1007/s11356-025-36498-x, 2025.
Nitig Singh, Vaibhav Tyagi, Saurabh Das, Udaya Kumar Sahoo, Shyam Sundar Kundu, “Python Indian Weather Radar Toolkit (pyiwr): An open-source Python library for processing, analyzing and visualizing weather radar data, Journal of Computational Science,Volume 81,2024,102363,ISSN 1877-7503,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocs.2024.102363.
Udaya Kumar Sahoo, Sachin Madhukar Deshpande, Nitig Singh, Surya Prakash Singh, Pandithurai Govindan “Enhancing the Membership Functions of a Fuzzy Hydrometeor Classifier in a C-Band Weather Radar System”. 6th URSI Regional Conference on Radio Science 2025. DOI: 10.46620/URSI_RSRC24/0977WPE9398.