The U.S.–India Partnership for Climate Resilience

As a continuation of the Department of State U.S.-India Partnership for Climate Resilience (PCR), scientists from NOAA NCEI, NC State University (NCSU), Texas Tech University (TTU), and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) held two workshops on the development, techniques and applications of downscaled climate projections, one at The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI) in Delhi and the other at the Environmental Protection and Training Research Institute (EPTRI) in Hyderabad. Scientific experts from TTU, NCSU and IITM presented state-of-the-art climate downscaling techniques using the ARRM method, NASA NEX climate products, CORDEX and analysis tools for resilience planning and sustainable development. The scientific techniques were provided to workshop participants, which included India’s State Action Planners, in a software package written in R by TTU scientists and several sessions were devoted to hands-on experience with the software package. The workshop further examined case studies on the use of downscaled climate data for decision making in a range of sectors, including human health, agriculture, and water resources management as well as to inform the development of the India State Action Plans.

This talk will discuss key outcomes including information needs for downscaling climate projections, importance of QA/QC of the data, key findings from select case studies, and the importance of collaborations and partnerships to apply downscaling projections to help inform the development of the India State Action Plans. One key need for conducting workshops like these is a user friendly interface for using the downscaling software. EPTRI graciously volunteered to develop such an interface which will be discussed here.