NEW DELHI: India and United Kingdom have embarked on an ambitious plan to carry out a large-scale joint observational campaign to study small-scale processes and large-scale monsoon variability.
The observational campaign will start on June 8 and will last till July end. The cost of this campaign is approximately Rs 50 cr which is shared between Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) from the Indian side and NERC and the UK Met Office from the UK side.
The plan would involve the deployment of UK’s BAe-146-301 atmospheric research aircraft with sophisticated scientific instruments and India’s Sagar Nidhi and Sindhu Sadhna research ships during the period May-July 2016, a statement said here today.
The UK’s instrumented aircraft is a special aircraft which can fly at a very low-level for taking the observations. Its observations would be augmented by special observational programmes over the land using boundary layer flux towers, radars, microwave radiometers and others.
This joint effort is part of the implementation agreement signed between Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), UK on “Predicting the Variability of the South Asian Monsoon” under the existing MoU between MoES and UK on Collaboration in Earth System Science.
Three research projects involving the Indian and UK scientists will study different aspects of physical processes affecting the monsoon.
The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) had launched the National Monsoon Mission programme in 2012 with an aim to improve monsoon prediction at all temporal and spatial scales through joint efforts of national and international scientific communities.
Paucity of data at smaller space and time scales, have a major effect on the large-scale variability of monsoon and improved understanding of the smaller scale physical processes will help in improving the computer simulation models, parameterisation of physical process, which in turn will produce improved monsoon prediction. (AGENCIES)
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