INTROMET-2009 begins in New Delhi

New Delhi, Feb 23 (ANI): INTROMET-2009, an International Conference on "Challenges and Opportunities in Agrometeorology", began here today.

The three-day conference is being organised by the Indian Meteorological Society.

The conference will discuss the issues like adaptation strategies for climate change impacts, monsoon variability and crop production and agricultural risk evaluation.

About 25 scientists from abroad and 150 Indian scientists are participating in this mega event to focus on the above issues and draw attention of global agro meteorological community, administrators and policy makers to debate and devise improved methods and techniques for better prediction, preparedness and mitigation of the adverse weather impacts on agriculture production and to make public and media aware of the possible impact, consequences and mitigation measures to sustain food security.

The conference will dwell upon these challenges through 46 oral presentations during eight technical sessions.

A Special Session has also been planned to share the wisdom of veteran scientists on "Role of IMS in addressing challenges in Weather and Climate Services".

The challenges facing agriculture and assuring global food security and the sustainable management of natural resources are manifold and immensely complex.

Agriculture is intimately tied to nature and hence subject to its vagaries. It is important to note that almost every aspect of agriculture from long term planning to tactical decisions in day-to-day agricultural operations is dependent on climate and weather.

Rapid changes in global and regional climate in the recent decades have become the focus of discussion among the scientific community.

The Noble Peace Prize winning Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected alarming changes in the trends of rainfall, temperature and extreme weather events.

The process of climate change is known to have increasingly disturbing impacts on agriculture threatening food security both at global and regional level. (ANI)