International Monsoon Study Group (IMSG)
October 2019 - January 2020: With global warming, the Indian Monsoon is changing, breaking well-established “rules” of the phenomenon and thus becoming more unpredictable. A new understanding of Monsoon is urgently needed to identify if the 2019 Indian Summer Monsoon year was an exceptional case or if it is the future trend. If it is a trend, then India needs to reconsider the strategy of the monsoon action plan and disaster management. The Monsoon Forecasting Team of EPICC conducted an International Monsoon Study Group (IMSG) under Climate Change. The objective of the group was to investigate complex dynamical processes during the monsoon and analyze climate change effects on them.
Prof. Elena Surovyatkina leads the Monsoon Study Group. Monsoon experts working in different research areas of monsoon dynamics and students were invited to PIK to participate in the IMSG.
Mr. Shiva Ji Singh Patel, an M.Sc. student from Banaras Hindu, University, Varanasi, India analyzed the evolution of sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean during the summer monsoon. Mr. Roman Medvedev, a Ph.D. student from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI), Moscow, investigated the effect of climate change on the withdrawal of the Indian monsoon. In particular, he investigated spatial patterns in the Indian Ocean and its relationship to the monsoon withdrawal under the influence of climate change. Dr. Rupali Laxman Sonone, a Post-Doc from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), India utilized her expertise in the field of complex network analysis to reveal connections between monsoon and the ENSO phenomenon. Using near-surface air temperatures, she investigated teleconnections with Indian monsoon during El Niño and La Niña events. Mr. Santosh Kumar Muriki, a Ph.D. student from The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Delhi, India, worked on developing prediction schemes for the forecast of the Indian monsoon in different parts of central India.
The three-month program of the IMSG was very successful, filled with interesting research and discussions, promising results, and future goals. We are continuing our collaborative research with the participants of the IMSG and planning the further extension of our Monsoon Study Group.
Prof. P.K. Joshi
June 2019: Prof. Pawan K. Joshi, Professor at the School of Environmental Sciences (SES) and Concurrent Faculty, Special Centre for Disaster Research (SCDR), from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) visited PIK for a short-term research stay in June. His guest stay was aiming to exchange his expertise in geospatial techniques (Remote Sensing & Geographic Information Systems (GIS)) for environmental studies including landscape characterization and climate change studies with EPICC scientists, especially those researching on data integration, vulnerability assessment and the development of cross-sectoral understanding of climate impacts. Further exchanges with the EPICC team took place with regards to the vulnerability assessment, Himalayan communities and migration.
He held a lecutre on “Indian Western Himalayas in Climate Change regime”.
Please find more information on his talk in an abstract here.
Further information on Prof. Dr. P.K. Joshi can be found in his C.V.
Prof. Ramakrishna Ramaswamy
December 2018: Prof. Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, the president of the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) and senior professor at the Indian Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), visited the EPICC team at PIK. His short-term research stay was aiming to strengthen the international science cooperation with the EPICC project and other scientists from PIK.
Prof. Ramaswamy held a lecture jointly organized by the Research Department Complexity Science (formerly known as Transdisciplinary Concepts and Methods) and EPICC on "Strategies for control and generalized synchronization in coupled systems”.
In addition, he participated in a workshop organized by EPICC on "Indo-German-African opportunities for building climate capacities".
Finally, he invited the EPICC project to have its 2019 Indian workshop in the facilities of the IAS.
Please find more information here.
