The third meeting of the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) of the Monsoon Mission was held at the Prithvi Bhavan, Ministry of Earth Sciences, on 23 April, 2013 under the co-chairmanship of Dr Shailesh Nayak, the Chairman, ESSO and the Secretary MoES and Prof J. Srinivasan, IISc Bangalore.

The members and special invitees attended the SSC meeting: Click Here...

• Remarks by the Secretary

  At the outset, the Secretary MoES welcomed the members and special invitees for the SSC meeting. He specially thanked Dr V.K. Gaur for his participation in the SSC meeting. He expressed satisfaction on the progress achieved so far under the monsoon mission. He remarked that a good response has been received from academic and research institutions from India and abroad in submitting research proposals.

• Remarks by Prof J Srinivasan
  
  

  Prof J Srinivasan remarked that the Monsoon mission science plan is pending for long time and may be released at the earliest. He also suggested that IITM may organize a brainstorm meeting on the monsoon mission models for Indian scientists to discuss the capability and weakness.

• Presentation by Dr BN Goswami on Action taken
  
  

  Prof B.N. Goswami, the Mission Director presented the details of the action taken on the recommendations made in the previous SSC meeting. He informed that draft Science Plan of the Monsoon Mission is ready. After a few modifications on the implementation plan, it will be circulated to SRMC and SSC members for their comments and suggestions. He mentioned that in the recent SRMC meeting, sufficient time was given to the members to review the proposals and the grading system by all the members was introduced. He further informed that the NCEP CFS model code was shared with couple of PIs from USA upon their request. The CFS T382 hindcast data up to 2008 was also given to IMD Pune for the analysis. Dr Goswami informed that ESSO-IITM is planning to organize an international conference on CFS/UM model development activities in 2013-14. As desired by the SSC, young scientists from different institutes have been nominated by respective Directors of ESSO institutions to work on international projects. So far, 50 proposals were received and processed under the Monsoon Mission. So far, sanction orders were issued for 16 proposals and 14 projects are already funded.

• The SRMC recommendations
  
  

  The third SRMC meeting was held on 4-5 March, 2013 at IITM Pune to discuss the project proposals received under the Monsoon Mission. Prof D.R. Sikka, the chairman of SRMC has discussed the SRMC recommendations during the SSC meeting. He informed that in total 18 project proposals were discussed in the SRMC meeting and recommendations were made. Out of the 18 proposals, one proposal by Prof Frode Stordal, the Stockhom University was withdrawn. Out of 17 remaining proposals, SRMC then recommended 9 proposals for funding under the monsoon mission. SRMC did not recommend 4 proposals for funding due to poor quality / non relevance to the monsoon mission. One proposal by Dr Vasu Mishra, FSU was recommended for revision and reevaluation. Three proposals were deferred for discussions in the next SRMC meeting. The detailed recommendation of the SRMC is given in Annexure-1.

  The SSC then discussed the recommendations of the SRMC and each of the 18 proposals in detail. The project proposal submitted by Prof Debashis Sengupta, IISc Bangalore was discussed separately in detail and the recommendations are summarized in section 8, below. After detailed deliberations, the SSC approved funding of 9 proposals (annexure- 2a) under the monsoon mission. Five proposals (annexure- 2b) were not approved for funding. The proposal by Prof Yasunari was recommended for discussions in the next meeting. The proposal of Dr Vasu Mishra was recommended for revision. The details of the SSC approval of project proposals are given in Annexure-2.

• Other points
  
  • ESSO-IITM will finalize the monsoon mission science plan and circulate it to all SRMC and SSC members for their comments and finalize the Science Plan by 30 June, 2013.
  • ESSO-NCMRWF may examine the forecast skill of the UK Met office unified model for last two years (2011 and 2012) and a report may be prepared and submitted to SSC.
  • ESSO-IITM Pune may organize a meeting in December 2013 to discuss the progress of the work being done by the national collaborators. In the meeting, detailed review of the work being done by ESSO-IITM and ESSO-NCMRWF will be also made