HYDERABAD: The Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H) has established a world-class Raindrop Research Facility (RRF) which captures three-dimensional information about raindrops with high spatial resolution.
Member of NITI Aayog, Dr V K Saraswat inaugurated the facility here on Friday. The facility will be used for simulating atmospheric conditions from the clouds to the ground in order to better predict rainfall.
Accurate rainfall prediction is one of the grand challenges in environmental research due to its relevance in understanding climate change and its accompanying socio-economic impacts. However, it is far from perfect. India experiences high unpredictability in rainfall making it a distinct and complex process compared to the rest of the world.
The facility established by IIT-H will estimate raindrop size distribution for precise rainfall prediction. It would be useful not just for India but also for the whole world in predicting rainfall with much better precision.
“One of the key limitations in rainfall modelling is the lack of fundamental knowledge of the microphysical processes like coalescence and phase change, in the actual atmospheric conditions. Using the novel experimental facility developed at IIT-H, the temperature can be varied from -10°C to 40°C and relative humidity can be maintained from zero to saturation level. Thus, we can mimic the dynamic atmospheric conditions from cloud to ground and estimate the shape and size distributions of raindrops at various altitudes,” said Prof Kirti Sahu, lead researcher of RRF & Professor, the Department of Chemical Engineering IIT-H.