PP017-0001
A database of paleo climate & environment from the Indian subcontinent: A regional initiative for science and society
Wednesday, 9 December 2020
Poster
Kushank Bajaj, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, CCCR, Pune, India, Atreyee Bhattacharya, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States, Supriyo Chakraborty, Indian Institute of Tropical Teteorology, CCCR, Pune, Maharashtra, India, Amir Bazaz, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore, India, Eric A Vance, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, United States and Balaji Rajagopalan, University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and CIRES, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
Science has entered the big-data era, where statistical learning methods are applied to gigabytes of data to gain insights into complex problems. In the field of paleoclimate & paleoenvironment, investigators reconstruct capital-intensive records of past climate and environmental changes represented by calibrated, indirect observations that span long durations (centuries to hundreds of years) and offer a wide spatial scope. Such records, going beyond the instrumental measurements, are critical not only in understanding complex climatic phenomena but also in assessing how climate and environmental factors impact socio-economic-political decision making (agriculture, water & land use, migration, famine, rise & fall of civilizations to name a few). As such paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental data needs to be systematically curated, standardized, quality controlled, and made accessible for use in modeling as well as climate and environmental services. Such datasets are unavailable for some regions that are at the forefront of climate and environmental changes.
Here we present an open-access database for paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental data. We have co-developed this database with multiple stakeholders as a service aimed at increasing visibility of and access to existing paleo data from the subcontinent, creating a platform for collaboration and providing climate and environmental products relevant to paleo-scientists, modelers, social scientists, and community practitioners. It is a paleo-community driven project that ensures transparent and equitable use of data using clearly laid data sharing policies. Currently, it hosts meta-data from more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, ~30 data records, and co-developed climate products. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first of its kind regional data sharing and collaboration platform, and compiles ~20 new data records not available in the existing global databases, improving the coverage of the Indian subcontinent. Approx. 70 principal investigators were contacted by email to request the compiled data. We believe this database would be pivotal in improving our understanding of past variability of the Indian Monsoon, consequently, future variability and historical climate-environment induced social-economic challenges.
