Abstract: The lecture will trace the evolution of scientific understanding that brought atmospheric carbon dioxide as a central theme in climate change and adoption of UNFCCC. Response to this challenge has been through COP and methodological framework adopted by IPCC. When applied to apportion the role of nations through their activities in their forests and croplands, a set of submissions have been made by nations. The estimates submitted by Government of India to IPCC and their methodologies will be briefly introduced. Based on recent global literature and studies at NIAS, scientific challenges in ‘reliably’ estimating biospheric carbon balance and its implications on confidence in the national official estimates will be critically examined.
About the speaker: Prof Vinay Kumar Dadhwal completed his PhD in Plant Physiology (1983) from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He joined ISRO in June 1983 at Space Applications Centre and was with ISRO/DOS till his superannuation in July 2021. He has headed three ISRO/DOS units, namely Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), Dehradun (2004-2010), National Remote Sensing Centre(NRSC), Hyderabad (2011-2016) and Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology(IIST), Thiruvananthapuram (2016-2021) and joined NIAS as Chair Professor in August 2021. He has extensive research experience in the use of earth observation data for agriculture, land transformation, land surface processes, disaster management information support, hydrology and terrestrial carbon cycle. At NIAS he continues his research on quantification and modeling of terrestrial carbon cycle of India.