Newly appointed Indian ambassador to Norway, Hon. Krishan Kumar, recently visited a meeting at CAGE that highlights fruitful scientific collaboration between Indian and Norwegian climate scientists.
Text: Maja Sojtaric
The occasion for the ambassador’s visit to UiT The Arctic University of Norway, was the annual meeting for the PACT project. The project studies how Arctic Ocean warming affected monsoons in the past, more specifically in the geological epoch known as the pliocene.
Pliocene climate is an analogue for our current warming ocean. It is the time in the relatively recent history of our planet when sea ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean were similar to the ones we observe now. The ice cover was also strongly reduced during this period, something that we may experience in our recent future due to global warming.
Variability in sea ice cover can have immense implications on the Earth´s climatic exchange between the ocean, land, and atmosphere. All of the world oceans are interacting through exchange of cold and warm water, creating the weather phenomena that we experience.
One such phenomenon is monsoon, a seasonal change in atmospheric circulation and rainfall associated with the asymmetric heating of land and sea. And one of the batteries fueling that system, which most commonly is associated with South Asian countries such as India, is actually the Arctic Ocean.
The international group of scientists in the PACT project, includes colleagues from Indian institutions such as NCOAR and The Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleaobotany.
The project is lead by CAGE and Geological Survey of Norway researcher Jochen Knies.
