IMD is headquartered in Delhi and operates hundreds of observation stations across India and Antarctica.

It has the responsibility for forecasting, naming and distribution of warnings for tropical cyclones in the Northern Indian Ocean region, including the Malacca Straits, the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf.

The Asiatic Society, founded in Calcutta in 1784 and in Bombay in 1804, promoted the study of meteorology in India.

Henry Piddington published almost 40 papers dealing with tropical storms from Calcutta between 1835 and 1855 in The Journal of the Asiatic Society.

[3] After a tropical cyclone hit Calcutta in 1864, and the subsequent famines in 1866 and 1873 due to the failure of the monsoons, it was decided to organise the collection and analysis of meteorological observations under one roof.

In May 1889, Sir John Eliot was appointed the first Director General of Observatories in the erstwhile capital, Calcutta.

IMD was the first organisation in India to deploy a message switching computer for supporting its global data exchange.

[12] It is regional nodal agency for forecasting, naming and disseminating warnings about tropical cyclone in the Indian Ocean north of the Equator.