6th International Conference on Climate Services

Syllabus subtopic: Salient features of World’s Physical Geography.

Prelims and Mains focus: about the conference and its objectives; about the new forecast system by India and its significance

News: The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), under the auspices of the Ministry of Earth Sciences of the Government of India, is hosting the 6th International Conference on Climate Services (ICCS6) in Pune, India from February 11-13, 2020.

Aim of the conference:

The conference aims to convene the international community of practice to:

• Assess the current state of play in the design, implementation, and results/ impact of climate services
• Share knowledge, lessons learned, and emerging examples of good practices
• Identify gaps and challenges to be addressed in future work
• Promote coordination and collaboration among climate service stakeholders

Significance

• ICCS6 will develop connections between and among the range of actors that make up the climate services community, including those based at national and regional meteorological services, national and local governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, research institutes, and the private sector.

• It provides a unique opportunity to share skills, experience, and expertise with an active climate services network.

New Climate Forecast System planned by India

• The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) is planning a ‘decadal forecast’ system along the lines of the United Kingdom’s Met Office to ensure better predictability in the climate time scale.

• The system, based on a coupled climate model, would first be taking shape in the form of a research programme to be taken up by IITM along with collaboration from the India Meteorological Department and other entities and would be operational only after its merits had been evaluated.

• This is a new idea with more relevance to present climate forecasting needs. So, given the need for longer-range prediction for 10 or 20 years, MoES will be starting a new programme in the country using a coupled climate model by utilising signals emanating from deep oceans to predict decadal climate changes.

• The World Meteorological Organization has set up global producing centres, coordinated by the U.K. Met Office, for annual to decadal projections that are already providing global-scale information.

Why is it required?

There were a number of gaps in the understanding of regional climate variability and its connections to global phenomena like the Indian Ocean Dipole. Indian forecasters faced a challenge in maintaining the quality of climate observations, and there is a need on the part of researchers to develop applications for specific sectors based on the available climate forecast.

Significance of the new system

• As there is a lot fundamental work on the decadal forecasting system that has already been done, India should not lag behind.

• Once the system was established, it would initially function for long-range forecasting at the national level and the model, if successful, would later be downscaled to the state or even district-level.