Extending a Climate Change Impact Assessment Project with India

Climate change issues are global in nature, yet they are quite variable at regional scale and affect most the developing and under-developed regions. Due to its diversified socio-economic and climatic regions, India is prominently vulnerable to the ensuin g climate changes and related impacts. To address these vulnerabilities and to adapt effectively to these impacts it is necessary to strengthen the institutional capabilities in India for climate change projections as well as to quantify sectoral impacts. An existing project between the Bjerknes Centre and TERI in India is in progress. It addresses the use of global and regional climate models to better understand climate change in India. The project also involves the capacity building, that is, empower ing Indian researchers with state-of-the art modeling tools throughout the scope of the project. However, in order to improve the capacity building in India, more training and practice, through short courses and hands-on activities, is necessary. This is where this research proposal will focus on: to provide better training for Indian and Norwegian researchers. Two workshops on climate modeling (global and regional scales) would help researchers in India and in Norway to learn more or to update their the oretical knowledge in the field. These workshops would also provide hands on activities so that researchers become familiar with new state-of-the-art modeling tools. Exchange visits between Norwegian and Indian researchers are also planned. These visits w ill also improve the cooperation between the research groups and will provide better capacity-building assistance.