City-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) has come together with the European Union (EU) for a project to understand the variability of monsoon in India over the last three years.
"The tie-up began in 2008 and is part of the Indo-EU collaboration on fighting climate change in India that took shape in 2004. Scientists from both parties are trying to find out the reason behind the huge variation in the monsoon season as witnessed in the country between 2008 and 2010," said officials of the British High Commission here on Wednesday.
The Reading University in the United Kingdom (UK), the European Centre for medium-range forecasting, the Hadley Centre of UK Meteorological Office are part of the project which is being co-ordinated by the IITM.
IITM scientist K Krishna Kumar, who is coordinating the project in India, said, "We are trying to explore various matters related to monsoon. In the last few years, the country has been seeing drastic variations during this season. For example, we will try to understand why there was drought in India in 2009 and a fairly good monsoon this year."
Kumar also said, "The fluctuating monsoon season in India will be studied along with the global phenomenon and its impact on the Indian monsoon. We are trying to find out this link and EU experts will be helpful on this front. Weather is fluid and nothing happens in isolation. For instance, some weather phenomenon in one part of the world will invariably have a cascading effect on other parts. Though, the monsoon variations in our country are undoubtedly a local occurrence, but they do have a global connection."
The project is in its second phase, and two research students have been sent to UK to attain their doctorate in one of the climate change topics, the officials said, adding "Broadly, we are also undertaking various monsoon predictions projects, such as vegetation of India during the monsoon, predicting the monsoon about 15 to 20 days in advance, among other things."
Meanwhile, Kumar said UK has earlier also been involved in research pertaining to monsoon in India. "It is out of mutual interest that we strive to understand increase in the green-house effects on global warming and what will be its impact on monsoon."
courtsey...Times of India
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