A Department of Earth Sciences is proposed to be set up in each university for teaching and research. And, Panjab University is likely to lead the way with its Department of Geography as the nodal centre. This was deliberated upon by the experts at the concluding day of symposium on “weather and climate extremes” — TROPMET 2015 here.
The experts including meteorologists, academicians, educationists, geologists among other also stressed that the climate change studies needs to be more interdisciplinary in nature, incorporating the views of geographers, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, chemists and other stakeholders. And, the effort to initiate a Department of Earth Sciences at Panjab University with Department of Geography as nodal center, shall be a step in this direction.
Climate change and health is an important area of research and the health care provider, the academician and the meteorologist need to interact in this regard. Union Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) must take cognizance of this, concluded the experts. The symposium TROPMET 2015 organized by the Indian Meteorological Society (IMS)in collaboration with Panjab University(PU) and Snow & Avalanche Study Establishment(SASE) concluded here on Wednesday.
The purpose of such an effort was to bring the educationists and end users together, said Ashwagosha Ganju, Director SASE. Over the last four days, more than 400 eminent scholars, operational meteorologists, researchers, planners, hydrologists, agriculturists, disaster managers, instrumentation scientists and technology developers presented their research findings in this symposium.
The themes that were deliberated upon included climate change, forecasting weather extremes, sectoral impacts of climate change, climate extremes and vulnerability and risk assessment. Over 108 research papers were presented, 9 plenary talks, 54 invited talks, 87 poster presentations and several industry presentations were made. The participants had come from all over India and abroad.