Sunday Times 2
India’s new climate model works best for South Asia
[NEW DELHI] India has embarked on a programme of developing its own climate models since existing ones are inadequate to study the increase in extreme rainfall and correlate it with human-induced climate change, top scientists say.
Copyright: Chris Stowers / Panos
Existing models do predict an increase in extreme rainfall events as observed in historical records, but these cannot be attributed to human-induced climate change, explains Arpita Mondal, assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai. “One of the major reasons behind this gap is because India does not have its own climate models,” she tellsSciDev.Net.
M.N. Rajeevan, secretary in India’s ministry for earth sciences, tellsSciDev.Net that by the end of 2016 India will have the computational power to make its own climate assessment model, allowing the country to participate in next assessment of the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
India’s Earth System Model (ESM), developed by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and slated for use with IPCC assessments this year, has already shown more than 90 per cent agreement with observed results, according to findings published in the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society in August 2015. The IPCC mandates that every country tries to quantify how human activities are influencing climate.
“The ESM will help to create projections of the future monsoon climate and its uncertainties and will be useful for understanding observed changes in the climate caused by natural and man-made effects,” P. Swapna, a scientist at the IITM tells SciDev.Net.
Courtesy scidev.net