ML-powered study to probe moist tropical climate, extreme events

Bengaluru: Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, Tel Aviv University, and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, are collaborating for a project that employs Machine Learning (ML) techniques to interpret tropical climates and extreme weather events better.

Their research project is one of the 10 selected as part of the India-Israel Joint Research Cooperation (IIJRC). It will use physics-inspired ML-based techniques to discover dynamic balances among state variables (parameters that define the state of a system, like pressure and temperature) in a variety of atmospheric phenomena.

Prof Jai Sukhatme from the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, IISc, one of the Indian investigators, noted the limitations of traditional techniques in deducing these balances. “We also intend to use recently developed techniques for the sampling of extreme events in climate models to obtain large datasets which are needed to prevent over- or under-fitting by ML models,” he told DH.

Prof Sukhatme will collaborate with Prof Nili Harnik of the Department of Geosciences, Tel Aviv University, and Prof Joy Monteiro of IISER, Pune, on the two-year project.

Tracking intraseasonal climate variability

The researchers have identified target problems that include moist tropical systems and extratropical (happening outside of the tropics) extreme events. They will focus on large-scale intraseasonal tropical systems like the equatorial Rossby waves, caused by movement of polar air to the equator and tropical air to the poles, and Madden Julian Oscillation, the eastward-moving pattern of anomalous rainfall.

“Indeed, these systems are known to modulate weather in the tropics, and if successful, the takeaway here would be a better physical understanding of such moist tropical systems,” Prof Sukhatme said.

The calls for the IIJRC project proposals in 2023 were made in two areas – AI applications in climate change and Agriculture for food security. IIJRC is jointly coordinated by India’s Department of Science and Technology and Israel’s Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology. Researchers from premier Indian institutions, including the IISc, IIM Bangalore, The Energy and Resources Institute, and IITs in Kharagpur and Indore will work with researchers from Israel on the 10 projects.