Hyderabad: Climate change is not just a science problem anymore and is intertwined with many issues including international policy, health, water security, food security, clean air and more, said former Indian Space Research Organisation chairman K. Kasturirangan. He called for more participation from Indian students and pointed out that research on climate had been limited and was not a priority for many students.
Speaking at the two-day national workshop on “Science of Climate Change: Indian Ocean and Monsoon at Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services”, he stressed that India still did not have its own weather model and that the American model had been modified to suit Indian conditions. “The Indian climate science community has been using climate models developed abroad, but with adoption to the regional characteristics. There were nine Indian scientists who contributed to the Inter-governmental Panel for Climate Change assessment report, five as lead authors. Considering the amount of expertise available in the country, I am wondering why we do not have a climate model developed in India?” Mr Kasturirangan said.
He said that at least by 2015, a Petaflop computing capability for climate modeling was essential. “Weather prediction is a computationally intensive problem. Establishing Petaflop computing capability will lead to significant improvements in weather forecasts,” he said. He also said that it was unfortunate that research on climate change was not a top priority for Indian students. He said that in India, the surface temperature is often looked at as a proxy to assess the impact of climate change. “Consider the monsoon and associated rainfall. Our nation’s agriculture and economy depend on the monsoon. It is important to know how rain we would receive.” “Research in this segment certainly calls for increased participation from students across different universities,” Mr Kasturirangan said.
