New findings in Atmospheric Sciences Suvesh
Sircar
Nature is chaotic and thus unpredictable. Hazard
due to natural disasters is also inevitable but a proper
forecast can avert the magnitude of disaster and save human
life and property.
The purpose of weather forecast in
India is two fold; accurate
forecasting of effective
monsoon and forecast of the occurrence of weather
extremes.
Indian economy is dependent on agriculture and
good agricultural growth requires adequate supply of water.
Thus forecasting effective monsoon is inevitable for Indian
economy.
Forecasting weather extremes, such as
thunderstorms, severe cyclones, microburst and other
weather perils are required to save life and property on
the ground and aviation aloft.
Indian Metrological
Department (IMD) has progressed a lot towards forecasting
monsoon with the implementation of eight parameter
statistical model for the onset in May and ten parameter
for its development and distribution in July. But, the
people are not happy with its performance of the year-
2004. However, IMD is expecting a better forecast this year—
2005.
The department of atmospheric sciences of the
Calcutta University has recently made some important
research towards predictability of monsoon rainfall over
Indian sub-continent, severe thunderstorms and microburst,
pattern recognition of frequency of occurrence of tropical
cyclones over Indian Ocean, developed predictive model for
forecasting flood.
The research team led by Prof. Sutapa
Chaudhuri is the first in the country to initiate the use
of artificial intelligence, chaos theory, fractal geometry,
graph theory and soft computing for analyzing and
forecasting such weather perils. The forecast made by the
team are satisfactory and they are planning to pass on
their research contribution to the operational institutes
like IMD.
The research team mentioned that the dynamics
of mid-latitude and tropics in particular being different,
the concepts accepted by mid-latitude scientists (the
western scientist) cannot exactly be accepted by the
tropical scientists. This is the reason, the enhancement of
Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) believed, so
far by the mid-latitude scientists; the measure of severity
of thunderstorm, has been abolished by the team
quantitatively. She stated that forecast of effective
monsoon using numerical weather prediction model would be
successful only if the physical parameters as well as the
physical processes could be incorporated in the model
properly taking proper care of the inherent chaos. And he
uncertainty involved in the weather system.
The
Atmospheric science department, which was set up in 2002,
has published eight international and 10 national research
papers in the academic session 2002-2004. The motto of the
research team of the department is to explore maximum
information from the minimum data archive to develop
indigenous forecast models using either conventional
computing or soft computing techniques.
The department
of science & technology and government of India have
identified the department for the National project CTCZ
(Continental Tropical Convergence Zone0 for coupled land—
atmosphere—ocean summer monsoon systems over India in an
integrated fashion. The purpose of the CTCZ national
project is towards improving the observational
understanding of the representative monsoon processes with
the aim to improve rainfall forecast and applications to
climate, water resources and agriculture.
The CTCZ
program plans to study monsoon energy budget and water
cycle to assess the contribution of the coupled land—
atmosphere-ocean regional monsoon system. The purpose is to
assess the skill of current atmosphere and coupled system
models in stimulating and forecasting monsoon rainfall and
enhance the capabilities of operational IMD/ NCMRWF
(National Centre for Medium RRange Weather Forecasting)
system to provide realistic estimates of surface water
budget.
Enhancing Indian climate science contributions
to monsoon research among the international climate science
community and research towards improving simulation of
large—scale monsoon rainfall in atmospheric/dynamical
models and thus improving rainfall runoff stream flow on
different scales using hydrological models and to promote
interaction amongst the Indian atmospheric, oceanographic,
ago –meteorological predictability of the monsoon
system.
The Department is offered to host DST
sponsored, national Project STORM (Severe Thunderstorm
Observational and Regional Modeling). For thunderstorm
research
Govt. of India, New Delhi has
identified the Department atmospheric sciences of the
Calcutta University for the Besides, the research team of
the department has initiated collaborative research with
National Centre for Remote Sensing, Indian Space Research
Organization (ISRO) under CAWSES (Climate & Weather of Sun
Earth System) programme and INDO-EURO international
collaborative Project with Coimbra Institute, Portugal on
causes of forest fires in EU nations.
The department has
recently made some important research towards
predictability of severe thunderstorms forecasting during
pre-monsoon season locally known as “Kalbaishakhi” over
Gangetic West Bengal, recognized the pattern of frequency
of occurrence of tropical cyclones over Indian Ocean,
developed predictive model for forecasting the monsoon
rainfall and flood.