K. Saikranthi
IISER Tirupati
Saikranthi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Climate Sciences at IISER Tirupati. A gold medallist in M.Sc. Physics from the University of Mysore, she earned her Ph.D. from the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory and completed postdoctoral research at IISc Bangalore. Her research focuses on radar meteorology, rain microphysics, and radar remote sensing. She employs space-borne radars such as TRMM and GPM to study precipitation structure, variability, and extreme weather events. At IISER Tirupati, she established an atmospheric laboratory to study radiative processes and soil–atmosphere interactions. She has published extensively in international journals and leads several research projects funded by DST, SERB, and IISER Tirupati.
Session 2B: Invited Lectures
Chairperson: Ekambaram Balaraman, IISER Tirupati ; Vasudharani Devanathan, IISER Tirupati
Daily scale rainfall extremes in India
Heavy rainfall events (HREs) cause flash floods, severe landslides, damage crops, menace natural ecosystems and are vulnerable as they can devastate lives and economy. The understanding of HREs’ characteristics, prediction skills, and future trends are highly essential for minimizing disaster losses. Self-recording rain gauges hourly rainfall data from India meteorological Department (IMD) during 1969 to 2010 have been utilized to identify rain events at a sub-daily scale. A significant decrease in the frequency of heavy rainfall events is observed over central India and northeast India, while an increase is observed over the northern west coast of India. Frequency of short-duration $(< 24 h)$ HREs over central India and long duration $(\geq 24 h)$ HREs over northern west coast of India is increased in the recent than in earlier decades. Incongruity with the observations, CMIP6 historical and AMIP high temporal resolution models are not able to simulate the shortduration HREs and, in turn, the observed trends at a sub-daily scale over the India landmass. Further, the impact of HREs on surface energetics and soil variables has been studied using the high resolution in situ data over a tropical station Yerpedu, Tirupati.