India developing a new Earth system model to improve forecasts, track climate crisis impacts

The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology along with the Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR), is developing a first-for-India Earth System Model to improve its forecasts, facilitate long-term climate studies, and predict climate impacts in the coming years, Union minister of earth sciences Kiren Rijiju said.

"An amount of 192.28 crore has been sanctioned under the Monsoon Convection, Clouds and Climate Change (MC4) sub-scheme to develop the climate forecasting system," Rijiju said.

Earth system model (ESM) is an open-source software that is designed to integrate the interactions of atmosphere, ocean, land, ice, and biosphere to estimate the state of regional and global climate under a wide variety of conditions. Since it is based on numerical weather prediction and data assimilation, it can be used for accurate climate change predictions, officials from the ministry of Earth Sciences explained.