Space Weather & Atmospheric Science

• Ionospheric Physics 

Ionosphere is the ionized region of Earth's atmosphere and crucial for all space based communication, navigation as well remote sensing satellites. The major thrust is on to understand the ionospheric characteristics, both in low latitude as well high-latitude. The coupling between Space Weather phenomena and Ionosphere is one of such challenging areas, particularly as the society is more becoming a technology driven society where any disruption in satellite system is a billon dollar problem. The researchers are actively exploring the impact in 

• Lower-Upper Atmosphere Coupling 

The Earth has both neutral atmosphere at the lower height in addition to the ionozed layers above. The interaction between these two region shapes the characteristics of both the region. The potential difference between Earth crust and Ionosphere maintain a current which modulated by thunderstorms and other phenomena. The Space Weather impacts the lower atmosphere through complex mechanism connecting Magnetosphere-Ionosphere-lower atmosphere. It addition, the energy transport to upper atmosphere by waves of various nature generated at lower atmosphere which modulate the ionosphere characteristics. The current research is focused on the study of these interaction both from both top side and bottom side.    

• Cloud and Precipitation Physics - Radar meteorology

Cloud plays a crucial role in Earth's radiation budget and key component of the hydrological cycle. The formation, evolution and dissipation of cloud are closely linked with aerosols and a serious concern in climate change scinarios. There are several unasweared questions about how the cloud and precipitations are linked and modulated. The thrust of this group to improve the understanding of the precipitation characteristics and its spatio-temporal evolution using satellite and ground based observations, both in tropical regions like India as well in polar regions like Arctic. Understanding of precipitation process not only improve the Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE) from remote sensing observations, but also helps in development of better forecasting models. Doppler weather radar is one of such remote sensing tool which is extensively being used for precipitation remote sensing that are directly benifitted from our research.    

• Numerical Weather Prediction and Climate-informatics 

Extreme weather events are major concern to the society and more so as the climate change increases the number of such events and associated fatalities all over the world. Numerical weather prediction (NWP) are physics based model to diagonize and forecast the weather phenomena. We actively use WRF models for studying the extreme weather conditions as well on developing improved parameterization schemes. On the other hand, there is an active research going on to develop AI/ML techniques for better predictions of the extreme weathers such as cyclone, thunderstorms, turbulence and lightning  combining satellite and NWP models.  

FACULTY