Raghavan Krishnan
IITM, Pune
Raghavan Krishnan specializes in climate modelling on scientific issues relating to the dynamics and variability of the Asian monsoon. His interests include monsoon dynamics and variability, phenomenon of monsoon-breaks and droughts, large-scale organization of monsoon convection, global climate change and impacts on the Asian monsoon and regional climate extremes. He leads the Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR) at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, and is deeply involved in developing in-house capability in Earth System Modeling to address climate change and related scientific issues. He carried out his doctoral research in atmospheric sciences at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, and obtained his PhD from the University of Pune in 1994. He has published over 90 scientific articles. He is actively involved in building human resources for Earth System Science. He was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2017.
Session 1D: Inaugural Lectures by Fellows/Associates
Chairperson: Mewa Singh, University of Mysore, Mysore
Understanding the South Asian monsoon response to greenhouse gas (GHG) and aerosol forcing View Presentation / View Video
Rising propensity of precipitation extremes and concomitant decline of summer-monsoon rains are distinctive hydroclimatic signals that have emerged over South Asia since the 1950s. Robust attributions of these signals to global and regional forcing remain unclear. Using a state-of-the-art global climate model with high-resolution zooming over South Asia, it was demonstrated by the speaker’s group that the weakening trend of the monsoon is attributable largely to anthropogenic aerosol forcing, together with contributions from land-use land-cover changes and rapid warming of the equatorial Indian Ocean. The simulated response to increased GHG-only forcing shows intensification of the regional monsoonal rains. It was further shown that monsoonal weakening under climate change significantly enhances occurrence of localized intense precipitation events, as compared to the global-warming response. The physical mechanisms of the South Asian monsoon response to GHG and aerosol forcing will be discussed.