A sky imaging system developed by Iranian scientists was unveiled on Monday at the National Exhibition of Water, Soil and Environment Technologies in Tehran.
While sky imagers have been used in Iran for years, the country had to import the expensive system. In addition to the price, Iran had neither the technology nor the expertise to repair the device, IRNA reported.
The system, whose development was fully funded by the government, collects images of the sky using a computer and processes them into cloud cover data. The data is then made available to meteorologists.
According to Hadi Ehsani, head of the project to develop the system, the domestically-produced system costs only one-tenth the price of its foreign-made counterpart.
He said, “Commercializing the project is the next step. To that end, we must promote the capabilities of the system among organizations such as Iran’s Meteorological Organization and the Ministry of Agricultural Jihad.”
In addition to cloud forecasting, the system is able to measure temperature, humidity and wind speed.
