Prof. Karumuri Ashok, Professor at the Centre for Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS), School of Physics, University of Hyderabad has been invited to be a Member of the Research Advisory Committee (RAC) of the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad. This has the approval of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, New Delhi.
Prof. Ashok has developed India’s first Earth System Model when he was at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. This model with suitable modifications was used to simulate global climate change scenarios for the IPCC. One of Prof. Ashok’s major and fundamental science contributions is the discovery of El Niño Modokis, typified by anomalous warming in the central tropical Pacific, with cooling on both sides. He is an acknowledged expert on tropical Indo-Pacific climate variability, prediction, changes such as the Indian Ocean Dipole, and the impacts of these climate drivers on Indian summer monsoon.
Prof. Ashok is currently focusing on theoretical aspects of monsoon instabilities, urban extreme event predictions, decadal climate predictions in tropics and utilization of the monsoon predictions for applications to fields such as agriculture. He has also contributed, as a member of the Indian Team, to the United Nations Framework Convention and IPCC, and served as a Member of the working and drafting group for preparing the Nation’s Mega-science Vision-2035. His vast experiences and knowledge will be helpful for guiding the activities of INCOIS.