New Delhi: The government is planning to make it mandatory for domestic airlines to share weather data captured by aircraft during takeoffs and landings with the weather office, which could lead to significantly better forecasts. Currently, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) launches weather balloons from 50-60 stations to collect critical data on temperature, humidity and wind speed at various altitudes, which form crucial inputs for weather forecasting models. These inputs could increase exponentially as the country records more than 6,000 takeoffs and landings by domestic airlines at various airports every day. M Ravichandran, secretary in the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences, told PTI that his ministry had been in discussions with the civil aviation ministry on the matter, and providing weather data would be “made mandatory for domestic airlines within a year”. “It has to be mandatory… It will not only be very useful for airline operations but also for weather forecasts everywhere,” he said. M Ravichandran said weather forecasts depended largely on the number of observations collected. He said that with new airports coming …