Stressing the need for sustainable development, President Kalam called for integrated atmospheric research while asking the participants to explore ways in which international requirements could be addressed.

Gadanki Plant, near Tirupati, residues emit up to 50 percent of the methane found in the atmosphere every year. This is one of the major drivers of climate change. Do living plants also produce this methane? That was the challenge posed by President A P J Kalam to the assembled atmospheric scientists gathered at the eleventh international workshop on MST radar at Gadanki here on Monday.

The president was inaugurating the workshop being held for the second time in India at the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory here. “Is there a way we can productively harness this methane,” he asked the audience. Some 70 scientists from 13 countries are participating in the week-long workshop.

Stressing the need for sustainable development, President Kalam called for integrated atmospheric research while asking the participants to explore ways in which international requirements could be addressed. “What have we learnt in the last four decades from our studies in the area? I will say that the 6 billion people on earth are the ‘weather makers’. In India 90 percent of our energy requirements are from fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases. Is there a solution? Yes, I believe we should look at energy independence by using clean, renewable energy sources like solar, wind, nuclear and hydel,” said President Kalam.

He asked the scientists to characterise the ozone layer in the region and asked them to go beyond predicting rain and giving the quantum of rain associated with a certain kind of cloud.

Tough task

Earlier, Chairman, ISRO, Dr G Madhavan Nair noted how modelling tropical weather was very tough and required understanding of various interactions. There was a need to involve large number of scientific teams to cover such a diverse landscape, he said, and appreciated the efforts of NARL in providing wind velocity, and temperature at close intervals. Dr Nair said that the Isro had initiated a Doppler weather radar as well as automated weather stations linked to the Insat to make better predictions.

The director of NARL, Dr D Narayana Rao informed the audience that the department of S&T had agreed in principle to establish state of the art network of MST radars in the country.

The one at NARL was the second largest in the world, he said. As different regions couldn’t be studied in isolation, it was necessary to bring universities, labs and institutions together, he said. Taking it further will be the proposal to grid the Indian network to the international network of tropical atmospheric radars, he said.

The Mesosphere-Stratosphere-Troposphere (MST) radar, which in essence is an array of radars, has been providing information on wind velocities and temperature. Around 32 transmitters emit pulsed energy of 2.5 million watts which when reflected back from the two boundaries in the atmosphere gives scientists useful information about the conditions there.

Dr Nair, who addressed the press briefly, said that the next PSLV launch was scheduled for January and will see four payloads placed in orbit, two Indian and two international. As part of the Small Satellites for Atmospheric and Space Sciences mission, there was a plan to have a payload Youthsat that would see the involvement of Indian and Russian students, he said. Regarding the GSLV mishap, he said that the problem had been identified using simulation and would be rectified using simulation.