By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 23 Mar: UCOST in collaboration with NASI Uttarakhand Chapter and Regional Science Centre celebrated World Meteorological Day-2021 on the theme, “The Ocean, Our Climate and Weather”, at Vigyan Dham in semi-virtual mode. The theme has been chosen by the World Meteorological Organisation to reflect its focus on “connecting the ocean, climate and weather within the Earth System”. Established on 23 March 1950, the World Meteorological Organisation is an intergovernmental organisation, which has membership of 193 Member States and Territories.
The Chief Guest at the programme was geologist Dr KS Misra, Executive Director, NUREMCO, and former Distinguished Professor, UPES. Director General, UCOST, Dr Rajendra Dobhal welcomed the Chief Guest and all the participants.
In his keynote lecture, Dr Misra said that the day highlights the importance of the behavior of Earth’s atmosphere. Nowadays, there is great dependence on weather forecasting, in which Radar signaling is very important. With advancement of technology, it is easy to predict weather accurately. He talked about jet streams, western disturbances and science behind the polar vortex. He recalled the compounding effect of westerly disturbance and monsoon that caused the Kedarnath disaster in 2013. With the help of snow cover mapping and variability study, the amount of accumulation of total snow in a particular year could be calculated and the availability of water in rivers originating from the mountains predicted. He also spoke about water channels of India, ground penetrating radar and its application in finding underground water streams. He highlighted the feature of Cyclone and Anti-Cyclone. According to scientists and researchers, climate control up to 2% could be achieved through proper planning and forestation.
The meeting ended with the vote of thanks proposed by Dr DP Uniyal, while Joint Director Dr Aparna Sharma, Senior Scientific Officer coordinated the event. GS Rautela, Advisor, Science City; Dr BP Purohit, Advisor, DBT Skill Vigyan Programme; Dr Ashutosh Mishra; Amit Pokhariyal; Dr Piyush Joshi; Dr Kailash N Bhardwaj, in-charge RSC, Dehradun; and all the council and RSC staff were present. Participants from various institutions virtually joined the programme.
