India 2023 (Bala)

India

Investigating the Indian summer monsoon rainfall under SRM

Host institution

Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Indian Institute of Science.

Grant year

2023

Project summary

Almost a quarter of the world’s population depends on South Asian monsoon rainfall for its livelihood – and any changes due to climate change, or climate interventions, could have a critical impact on their livelihoods. This is particularly true for India, as the summer monsoon contributes to about 80% of annual rainfall. SRM has been proposed as a potential means to reduce risks brought about by global warming, but could also have unexpected effects on precipitation. A team led by Prof. Govindasamy Bala, at the Indian Institute of Science, will create and use multiple climate model simulations to evaluate the effect of SRM on the monsoon, compared to a warming world without SRM, bringing crucial new information to global discussions about its future potential.

The team

Prof. Govindasamy Bala

Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

Govindasamy Bala is based at the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). His main research interests are modelling climate change, carbon and water cycles, solar geoengineering, and the global and regional monsoon systems. He has published over 110 peer-reviewed papers on climate change, carbon cycles and monsoons. Prof. Bala was the recipient of the 2008 Scopus Young Scientist Award for Earth Sciences, and together with collaborators from China and the USA, also won the prestigious World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Norbert Gerbier MUMM International Award for 2014, for a research paper on fast climate system adjustments. Prof. Bala has served as a Lead and Contributing Author in the AR5 and AR6 IPCC WG1 reports.

Photo credits

Banner: From Sri Lanka to the Himalayas. Image acquired by Proba-V on 14 March 2014. Credit: ESA/VITO, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Join the Global conversation

Click below to join our growing community