Weather department to focus on decadal climate predictions

PUNE: Instead of focusing on climate predictions for the coming 100 years, the weather department will focus on making climate predictions for a decade to address climate change, said M Rajeevan Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences on Tuesday.

He was speaking to the press during the inauguration of the 6th International Conference on Climate Services (ICCS6) at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM)  in Pune.

He termed it as a new idea, different from the general practice of researchers predicting the climate of 2070. 

“There is more potential in decadal predictions as the predictions will be more helpful with respect to climate change. It also has a lot of relevance. We will be starting a new project and we already have a few models. However, it will be a research thing. Operational things will be a little later,” said Rajeevan.

He said that 10 years’ average will be given. “World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has set up global producing centres for annual to decadal predictions. This is being coordinated with the UK meteorological office. And many fundamental work is going on. IITM will be taking up the research for national level. Later, we can have downscale to state levels also. Mostly, the signals will come from deep oceans. By the end of this year, at least the research part will be launched,” said Rajeevan.

Speaking about warmer winters, M Mohapatra, Director General of Meteorology (DGM), India Meteorology Department (IMD), said that the predictions for winter by the IMD are right.

“In December, there were no cold wave conditions, only cold day conditions were there. There are many reasons for this. At the regional level, in January, there were 10 western disturbances (WD) so the colder winds were not penetrating towards the southern part. There are around 3 WD in February as well,” said Mohapatra.

Talking about the five WMO recognised observatories in India, the IMD has proposed five more. These observatories have recorded 100 years of data. 

“We are now proposing five more stations to be recognised by WMO. There are ocean stations as well. These five bois stations in Bay of Bengal have been present for observation for the last 20 years. We have proposed them as well under the decadal category,” said Mohapatra.