National Training workshop on fundamentals of Data Assimilation (NTDA)

09-21 Sep 2022, DESK-IITM, Pune

DESK has a mandate to give fundamental and targeted training on gap areas of the Earth Science and allied subjects aiding to train the young manpower and students of the Ministry as well as other academic and research centre. In this connection, the National Training Workshop on Fundamentals of Data Assimilation (NTDA) is being proposed to be conducted at IITM from 09-21 Sep 2022 in onsite mode.

Data Assimilation is the central component of any forecasting centre for providing quality initial conditions which lead to accurate forecasts of sub-season to seasonal time scales (S2S). The decadal predictions for the future of ten-to-thirty years also are on increasing demand in the arena of climate predictions and projections. The art of data assimilation is about combining the observations with the model in a mathematical meaningful manner such that the forecasts are as close as possible to the observations. The area of Data Assimilation has evolved in the last four decades in the field of atmospheric science and weather forecasts. The advent of fast computing power and availability of millions of observational data from the surface, aerial and satellite measurements per day provided tremendous improvements in our weather and short-term climate forecasts most of which rely on the quality of the initial conditions achieved with a consistent Data Assimilation system.

Despite the applications and benefits of Data Assimilation in weather forecasts and various other optimization problems in the earth system sciences, it is not well trained in our conventional educational framework. The fundamentals of Data Assimilation and various state-of-the-art techniques in the fields need to be continually taught and propagated to younger and inter-mediate career scientists of the nation. In view of this, a National Training Workshop on Fundamentals of Data Assimilation is envisaged as a two-week program.

Scope of the Workshop

The workshop is aimed to give basic education to students, PhD scholars and early career scientists/professors on the subject of Data Assimilation. Despite the application of DA in operational weather forecasts, teaching this subject at university and other academic levels is rather limited. To level this gap, a National Training Workshop on Data Assimilation will be helpful and is a need of the hour. The workshop will target to train a selected pool of master’s degree program students (those in the later stage of their degree) in Atmospheric/Oceanic and allied sciences, PhD scholars, early career scientists, and professors.

Shortlisted Applicants for the participation of the National Training Workshop on Fundamentals of Data Assimilation (NTDA) 09-21 Sep 2022 at IITM.

Instructions to participants