New Delhi: In an application of the old adage that knowledge is power, the government is setting up research centres to map climate change and get indigenous data that will help it push its case more effectively in global climate change negotiations.
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A key function of these establishments, say officials associated with the project, will be to develop climate models that use data generated within India.
Local model: Earlier this week, environment minister Jairam Ramesh announced the National Institute for Research on Climate and Environment, funded by Isro and the environment ministry. Manan Vatsyayana / AFP
Accordingly, in the last one year, at least three of the country’s leading research institutes have either launched or are in the process of setting up dedicated centres that will be part of the Indian Network of Climate Change Assessment. The announcement of setting up of the third centre was made last week.
Most studies that have estimated India’s greenhouse gas inventories, or the impact of climate change over India, have relied on so-called global circulation models prepared by research centres based out of the UK or the US. These models simulate the atmosphere at a given point and are extrapolated over time frames to create climate scenarios.
Earlier this week, Jairam Ramesh, minister of state for environment with independent charge, announced the National Institute for Research on Climate and Environment, funded by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and the environment ministry, to measure and monitor greenhouse gases.
Stressing the need to set up India’s own research initiatives to measure and monitor climate change, Ramesh said in a press statement that “much of the data derived from Western sources was found to be biased. There’s no primary monitoring done in India”.
Quoting an example, Ramesh said: “In 1990, the US estimated methane gas emission from paddy cultivation in India at 38 million tonnes (mt) a year. However, Indian scientist A.P. Mitra later proved that emission from such cultivation varied from 2 mt to 6 mt, with the median being 4 mt, which is an accepted measure now.”
The Isro institute follows on the heels of the Divecha Centre for Climate Change, set up at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and funded by the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at the Imperial College, London, and California-based businessman Arjun Divecha.
Both of these were set up after the Centre for Climate Change Research, notified by the ministry of earth sciences in January, that will come up at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune.
IISc already has a specialist department, Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, which has weather specialists working on climate.
“In India, understanding climate was largely tied to understanding monsoon. That’s changed over the last few years and the field has expanded,” said J. Srinivasan, who chairs the Divecha centre.