12-14 September, 2011, Lucknow - Earth Science India

National Conference on Science of Climate Change and Earth’s Sustainability: Issues and Challenges ‘A Scientist-People Partnership’
12-14 September, 2011, Lucknow
heights of 5 to 15 km respectively with a resolution of 15-30 m. With bin time of 100 ns
and average integrating time of 20s for one profile, the backscatter counts could offer
profiles of high temporal resolution. Utilizing the system–character, the backscatter
count and extinction coefficient of aerosols are examined in temporal resolution of a
minute or less for extraction of cloud–aerosol association at different environmental
situations. The basic approach adopted here is through determination of Roll Off rate of
decay of the intensity profile (both for backscatter count and extinction coefficient) of
each echogram as tail carries the information of mixed population of the scatterers in
the atmosphere. Utilizing character of Roll Off rate from a number of echograms
covering different periods of a year, the paper offers how identification of precipitating
and non precipitating cloud is possible from an MPL system. The contribution of dust
particles in modifying the aerosol-cloud interaction is also investigated.
ASSESSING IMPACT OF EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS
IN INDIA
Ajay Singh and Anand Patwardhan
SJM SOM, IIT Bombay.
email: ajay@som.iitb.ac.in, anand@som.iitb.ac.in
Extreme weather events have enormous impacts on socio-economic and
ecosystems. There is increasing consensus about shift in frequency as well as in
magnitude of extreme weather events in changing climate due to augmentation in
atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and aerosols. India is additionally
vulnerable to climatic extremes due to high population density, poor infrastructure, low
human development index and minimal coping capacity. In this scenario it is important
to look at damage caused by climate extremes over India, spatially and temporally.
Impacts data constitute information about mortality, persons affected, villages affected,
crops affected and total economic loss. All extreme weather events combined together
show significant increasing trend in impact. Significant increasing impacts are observed
in case of duststorm, flood, hailstorm and lightening. Floods share maximum impacts
caused by climate extremes. Spatially, total mortality due to the extreme climate events
is maximum in Orissa. It also stands first in normalized mortality. Cold wave has
significant increasing trend in impact on Haryana, Rajasthan and West Bengal, whereas
significant decreasing trend in Madhya Pradesh. The states showing greater number of
events do not necessarily depict higher impact. Thus adaptive capacity and resilience of
the society to the climate extremes play important roles on overall impact on the
system. Finally policy implications of impacts of these events and future work have
been discussed.
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