DST Centre of Excellence in Climate Modeling, IIT Delhi

The present state of the planet, with the rapid changing of climate, and global warming becoming more apparent around the world, is one of the most worrying concerns the mankind has today. Being a young and developing country, India, at the crossroads of development and sustainability, will find it much more challenging in times to come. In order to achieve the ambitious economic goal of five trillion USD, while it takes the reforms that were long promised i.e. relaxation in regulations and controlling, reformation of labour laws, privatisation of state entities, and investment in infrastructure development, it should make sure it is achieved not at the cost of its climate — a highly complex and tough task that needs the cooperation of the private and public sectors. In this regard, to address certain pressing issues of climate change in India, IIT Delhi has taken a major initiative and created the DST Centre of Excellence in Climate Modeling with the support of the DST, GoI.

The country needs reliable climate projection for future planning and policy making to make informed decisions against the backdrop of global warming and climate change. This is deliverable only when we have reliable models - models successful in capturing the present-day climate of India. However, all the available climate models possess unacceptably large biases, especially with rainfall and temperature over India, but they are doing reasonably good over the other regions and at the global scale. The Centre of Excellence is in the process of developing an India Centric Climate Model, which can simulate the regional climate of India and can be used for future climate projections at district level to assess the impacts of climate change on agriculture, energy, health, human resource, water resource, and ultimately on the economy of India.