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Published by the Press, Information & Culture Wing, Embassy of India |
In this Issue Opinion Feature: Interview - Jaswant Singh, External Affairs Minister
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INDIA TO HOST THE FIRST EVER INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON LONG TERM CHANGES AND TRENDS IN THE ATMOSPHERE India to host the first ever international workshop on "LONG TERM CHANGES AND TRENDS IN THE ATMOSPHERE". This will bring together various frontier groups of scientists from all over the globe in a common platform to discuss and address how the long term analysis of atmospheric data and model simulations may throw light on the basic issues of climate change and changing atmospheric composition and the ionosphere. Another aspect of this event is the future vision, as to what we should expect or foresee for the future in relation to human welfare and human induced pollutants under different scenarios of atmospheric perturbations. The workshop is being held at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, in Pune during the 2nd and 3rd week of February. The human society is presently conducting global experiments on earth's atmosphere. These are increasing worldwide atmospheric concentrations of chlorofluore-carbons, carbon dioxide, methane and several other gases. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that if these trends continue, then the mounting levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may further increase and threaten the Earth's climate and weather leading to substantial adverse impacts in the next century. One such burning case is the threat to ozone layer, which protects us by filtering out dangerous ultraviolet radiation from sun. The main objective of the workshop is to share the vision of atmospheric scientists from all over the world for the development and applications of study on long term trends and permanent changes of atmospheric parametres. To develop a scientifically robust and predictive understanding of the earth system such as stress on the development of multidimensional models which treats radiation, dynamics and chemistry interactively and capable of predicting future atmospheric composition up to certain accuracy. It will also emphasise the greenhouse effect on ionosphere, which are so important for TV/radio communications. The human induced perturbations are not only affecting the lower part of the atmosphere but also the upper part of the atmosphere which consequently will have long term impact on us. This later issue has largely been ignored so far. Thrust of this workshop would be to emphasize this aspect and improve our understanding about other potential implications, of global atmospheric changes. This conference would bring together over one hundred researchers from approximately 15 nations. The expected outcome of this workshop would be in terms of capacity building in our region, greater co-operation for using the existing long-term data on atmospheric parameters. It would also set the tune for long term future projections in a more precise manner. A specific programme of action is also expected to emerge for implementing the recommendations of the workshop both at national and international levels. |