Understanding Space-Time Variability of Climate Extremes for Societal Resiliency in Indonesia and India Workshop report

Climate extremes, for example, floods, droughts and heatwave exhibit significant spatial- and temporal- variation in their magnitude and frequency. Also, its socio-economic consequences, which are mostly negative impacts, do vary with region. In this context, it is important to understand these climate extremes exclusively from science aspect, and importantly its linkages including impacts from socio-economic aspects. The enhanced understanding, broadly, enable better decision making, consequently increase the resiliency of a system. However, the fact that each region has unique climate and socio-economic signature makes the entire analysis from scientific understanding to drawing mitigation measures specific to the region. As part of the study, two regions two different countries, i.e., India (Krishna River Basin) and Indonesia (Serayu River Basin) are selected to understand similarities and differences of climate extremes across different space and time scales for societal resiliency.

The proposal has two main objectives, i.e., 1. Scientific understanding of hydroclimate extremes; 2. Translation of scientific understanding into the decision making to increase the societal resiliency. The first objective is mostly straightforward and its difficulty depends on the complexity of the basin related physical mechanisms. The second objective is more than suggesting a scheme. The task involves identifying existing systems and understanding strategies for managing floods and droughts in urban, agriculture and water resources management contexts talking with different levels of various stakeholders. As part of it, Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and workshop with relevant stakeholders of the Krishna River Basin is planned at the IIT Hyderabad on 7th and 8th January, 2020. More information on Focus Group Discussion and workshop can be found here.

Funding Agency: Asia-Pacific Network (APN) for Global Change Research awarded the project in February 2019

Collaborators:

• • • Dr. Mas Yanto, Jenderal Soedirman University,Purwokerto, Indonesia

    • Prof. Balaji Rajagopalan, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.

    • Dr. Satish Regonda, IIT Hyderabad