The Cause and Effect of Climate Change: The Significant take-home messages from the IPCC Report

Recently Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its sixth Assessment Report on the scientific basis for Climate Change Analysis. This comprehensive study paints a disturbing picture of the status of our environment. It shows that we are already experiencing the effect of climate change due to anthropogenic activity and the same could be exacerbated in coming times. The report categorically indicates that unless swift action is taken we may experience a very long-lasting impact of climate change.

We will discuss various issues about climate and climate change. We begin by examining the cause of climate change We will also discuss the impact of climate change on various parts of the globe. Specifically, will examine, the possible impact of climate change over the Indian region in terms of temperature and precipitation changes. We will also understand the possibility of the occurrence of extreme events due to anthropogenic climate change.

About the Speaker:

Prof. Ravi Shankar Nanjundiah is currently a Professor at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, and the Divecha Centre for Climate Change, the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Till recently he was the Director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.

Ravi worked on s his thesis titled ‘Study of Intraseasonal VaTriations of the Tropical Convergence Zones in a Simple Monsoon Model’ and obtained his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from IISc, Bengaluru in 1992. He did his ME (Mechanical Engineering) from IISc, Bengaluru in 1986. He obtained his BE (Mechanical Engineering) degree from Rani Durgavati University, Jabalpur in 1984. Study of Monsoon and its variability using climate models, application of High-Performance Computing/Grid Computing for climate and weather-related studies, and use of Machine Learning Techniques for Monsoon prediction and downscaling are
his key areas of interest. He has worked extensively on various aspects of the Indian Summer Monsoon.

He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru (2019), Fellow of India Meteorological Society (2018), Adjunct Professor of TIFR (2019-present). He received the Nvidia Innovation Award in 2013; he was Adjunct Faculty, ICTS-TIFR 2011-2014; Associate Editor, Journal of Earth System Sciences (published jointly by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and Springer), 2008-2014; and Sir CV Raman Young Scientist Award for the year 2000 in the field of Earth Sciences.

Ravi started his research career as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory, USA. He worked there in the CHAMMP (Computer Hardware, Advanced Mathematics, and Model Physics for studying global change) project during February 1993-February 1995. Then, in July 1995, he came back to India and joined the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (CAOS) at IISc, Bengaluru as an Assistant Professor. At CAOS, he became Associate Professor in July 2001, Professor in July 2007, and the Chairman of the Centre in December 2013.

Ravi has been active in human resource development and so far, has guided 15 Ph.D., 04 M.Sc. (Engg.), and 9 M.Tech. students. He has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in national and international journals and has presented papers at many conferences.