Centre for Climate Change Research

Programme Manager: Dr. R. Krishnan

        Climate Change is being recognized as a major threat to present day society because of its adverse impacts on ecosystem, agricultural productivity, water resources, socio-economy and sustainability in a global as well as regional basis, it was recognized that there are important science issues that need to be addressed, and also that the present efforts in India to deal with climate change issue are not only inadequate but also lack integration and networking. In order to discuss these issues in a forum of national experts and policy makers a Brainstorming Workshop on “National Program on Climate Change Research” was organized by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, New Delhi on 1st June 2007. The Workshop was addressed by the Honorable Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences and attended by senior scientists, policy makers, and representatives from Ministry of Environment & Forests, Department of Science & Technology, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and other scientific institutions. Establishment of a dedicated centre for undertaking research on science aspects of Climate Change at IITM, Pune was strongly endorsed by the panelists and participants of this Brainstorming Workshop. Consequent upon the recommendation, a proposal for a Centre for Climate Change Research was submitted to the Ministry of Earth Sciences. The proposal received approval on 7th January 2009 under the Program on Global and Regional Climate Change as one of the schemes of the 11th Five Year Plan.

Objectives

• Development of a coupled modelling system for Climate Change Studies
• Incorporation of extensive field campaign observations to improve model physics
• Generation of an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate change scenarios using RCMs
• Development of a Climate Change Data Archive and Retrieval system
• Assessment of Climate Change on Indian Monsoon climate; India's water resources, agriculture etc.
• Projection of expected future changes in different components of monsoon system (onset, depressions, ISOs etc) as well as extremes in rainfall and temperature
• Tailoring the climate model simulations for impact assessment by different groups in India and other countries in the region
• Assessing the Impacts of dynamic vegetation and interactive carbon cycle on the projected future monsoon rainfall
• Palaeoclimate reconstruction, palaeoanalogues for understanding processes responsible for present Climate Change and to provide direction for future projections

The structure of the Centre is as shown below: 

Organizational Structure

         We are currently in the process of setting up the necessary physical infrastructure (building, computer, etc.) for the Centre. Our first priority would be to quantify the uncertainty in the projection of Indian monsoon using regional climate models. Simultaneously, we shall be working on developing a high resolution (global) coupled model for making reliable projection of monsoon under climate change scenarios.

Detailed Project Report of CCCR