Weather scientists at the city based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) have embarked upon a study — high resolution climate projections over South Asian monsoon region — which is expected to contribute significantly to future crop and water management and planning in India.

The study is part of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)’ s Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) for which the Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR) of IITM is acting as a nodal agency for South Asia.

“The futuristic dimension of this project spanning next 20-25 years will help the country in better planning of crop and water resources and also aid more accurate monsoon predictions, resulting from the use of high resolution models,” Mr R. Krishnan, Executive Director of CCCR, told PTI.

Aided by the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences which funds IITM, the study was launched in February this year.

It will facilitate generation of high resolution regional climate projections with the involvement of various climate modelling and impact assessment groups from India and other countries including Norway, Australia, Japan and Germany.

“Running global climate model is an expensive proposition. This CORDEX project holds importance for us because South Asian countries need more monsoon information on regional scale for their agricultural planning,” noted Mr Krishnan, adding that the timeframe of the study is tentatively worked out at five years.

The CORDEX study will involve the use of high resolution (with every grid area of 30-35 km) aiming accuracy and precision in the Asian monsoon projections.

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