About the lecture
Water is very vital for the survival of humanity and biota. One of the major implications of climate change is changes in spatial and temporal variability of monsoon pattern including increase in extreme events. The frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas (6% per decade) consistent with warming and observed increase of atmospheric water vapor and can have serious impact on water cycle. The light and moderate precipitation events are decreasing, and heavy and extremely heavy rainfall events are increasing and likely to increase in future. The spatial and temporal changes are occurring at monthly, seasonal, annual, and decadal scales have major implications on the water cycle and consequently on all water use sectors such as agriculture, power, biodiversity, urban settlements, etc. The question is whether we are prepared to adapt to changes in monsoon pattern which are likely to happen in next 2-3 decades?
About the speaker
Dr Shailesh Nayak is currently the Director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, Chancellor of the TERI School of Advanced Studies, Delhi, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing (JISRS) and Life Trustee, India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi. He obtained his PhD degree in Geology from the M.S University of Baroda in 1980. He was Secretary, the Ministry of Earth Sciences during August 2008-2015, and provided leadership for programs related to earth system sciences.
He set up the state-of-the-art tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean in 2007 and provided tsunami advisories to the Indian Ocean rim countries. He has pioneered the development of algorithms and methodologies for the application of remote sensing to the coastal and marine environment, and generated the baseline database of the Indian coast, and developed services for fishery and ocean state forecast. This coastal database has formed basis of the managing the coasts in India. He was instrumental in creating database of the glaciers of the Indian Himalaya.