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48 PIONEERING A NEW FUTURE
L-R: Union Health Minister
Dr Harsh Vardhan inaugurating the HPC facility, with IIG Director Dr DS Ramesh
The imaging Riometer detects cosmic absorption placed at Maitri in Antarctica
Keeladi excavation in Tamil Nadu: a peep into the past to build magnetic secular variation profile for India
Made-in-India declination inclination magnetometer
Classical eye observation declinometer used at Colaba and Alibag Magnetic observatories
to ISRO, DRDO, DoS, and NHPC besides providing high resolution digital magnetic data to several research and government organizations.
On the research front, IIG is engaged in understanding the processes occurring in the Earth’s interior on various time scales using a variety of geophysical tools. In the areas of space geomagnetism and plasma physics, radio and optical remote sensing along with geomagnetic field variations are employed as diagnostic tools to probe the Earth’s near space environment. Several theoretical studies are being carried out on charged particles, electric fields and currents in the space environment comprising solar wind, magnetosphere and ionosphere.
Recently, three new interdisciplinary research programmes; Space Weather Prediction, Climate Variability and Change, and Coupling & Dynamics of Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Magnetosphere (LAIM) have been initiated at IIG, which are likely to have immense societal value and relevance.
RESEARCH PROGRAMMES
• Space weather is generally referred to as disturbed weather in the Earth’s upper atmosphere
and outer space due to energetic phenomena occurring on the Sun, such as Coronal Mass
Ejections (CME), and Solar Flares, which can have potential effects on satellite orbital position, payload electronics, radiation safety of astronauts, satellite communication/navigational systems, electrical power grids and long distance pipelines on Earth. It is, therefore, imperative to develop space weather forecasting models that can alert the users about the severity of space weather with a lead time of a few hours to a few days in order to mitigate the systems from related hazards.
• Identification and quantification of possible drivers of recent climate variability were addressed by IIG scientists by adopting a novel information theory technique, namely, the Transfer Entropy. The global measurements
of greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols, solar activity, ENSO, Global Mean Temperature Anomaly (GMTA) made during 1984-2005 were utilized to estimate the information exchanged between GMTA and other variables. The analysis revealed that the greenhouse gases (mostly anthropogenic origin) together contribute to 48% rise in global mean temperature. Natural events such as volcanic eruptions do make significant contribution (23%) to the GMTA.