1. Dr. Prasanta Kumar Bal,
Project Scientist C
National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF),
Ministry of Earth Science (MoES), Earth System Science Organization (ESSO)
Govt. of India, Noida, A-50, Sector 62, UP, India
Email: prasantbal.cc@gmail.com/pkbal@ncmrwf.gov.in
Mobile: +91-8056005608
Prasanta Kumar Bal is a climate change researcher whose background spans Computer Science,
Mathematics, and Climate Science. He has an excellent research record in climate modelling and
has published in the world’s leading scientific journals, as well as in the specialist climate literatures.
He also has management experience, coordinating various Government projects, and currently
working as a project scientist on contractual basis at National Centre for Medium Range Weather
Forecasting (NCMRWF), Ministry of Earth Science (MoES), Govt of India, UP, A-50, Noida, Sector
62, India.
Education
• PhD. Climate Modeling and Simulations, from Anna University, Chennai. Tamil Nadu.
• M.Tech., Computer science, (2008-2010), Sathya Sai University, Andhra Pradesh, India
• M.Sc., Computer Science (2005-2007) Ravenshaw University, Orissa, India.
• B.Sc., Computer Science (2002-2005) Ravenshaw University, Orissa, India.
Professional Experience
2015(April) to till date- Project Scientist, NCMRWF, MoES, Govt. of India, Noida, UP, India
2011- 2015: Scientist (Climate Modeling), Centre for Climate Change and
Adaptation Research, Anna University, Chennai
2010-2011: Software Engineer (working in C++ and JAVA) at Unisys –Bangalore.
Major Research Fields
Climate Modeling, Meteorology, Climate Change Impact and Vulnerability assessments,
Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP), High Performance Computing, Application of
mathematics and computer science in the field of meteorology and climate change.
(A Total of 7 years (2011-2017) of research experience in the field of climate modeling and simulations and 1 year (2010-
2. 2011) in software engineering field)
Awards Received
Secured the Gold Medal for excellence in M.Sc. (Computer Science.) Programme by Dr.
APJ Abdul Kalam, the former President of India.
Research work published in Media/Press/News:
http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31814&articlexml=Day-temperatures-could-go-up-4C-by-end-
25012017004010
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/mild-winters-may-be-the-new-normal-says-
study/articleshow/56768976.cms?from=mdr
Workshop/Conferences:
• Delivered a talk on “Climate Modelling and Climate Change “ in the workshop “Tamil Nadu
State Action Plan strategies” on 6th
April 2016 in Anna University to share my modeling
expertise with the many many stake holders, Govt. administrators, nodal officers, policy
makers of Tamil Nadu Govt.
• Participated in a PRECIS workshop taking place from the 13th
to the 17th
of May 2013 at
Reading University, organized by the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change, UK.
• Presented a poster on “Climate Change projections over Tamil Nadu using a high resolution
downscaling approach” at International Conference on Regional Climate –CORDEX 2013, at
Brussels, Belgium.
• Participated in International Tropical Meteorology Symposium (INTROMET - 2014) from 21-
24 February 2014 at SRM University, Chennai and presented a paper entitled “Climate
Change Projections for Tamil Nadu: Forecasting applications and Knowledge
disseminations”.
• Participated in a Climate Science Training Programme at Divecha Centre for Climate
Change, Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore from 20th
to 31st
January 2014.
• Participated in TERI –BCCR Climate Research school-III on Statistical Downscaling from
25th
-29th
November 2013 at TERI University, New Delhi.
• Attended a workshop on “Mathematical Essentials for Cryptography” conducted on
September 2013, organized by Department of Information Science and Technology, Anna
University, Chennai.
• Submitted a report on “Climate change projections for Tamil Nadu at regional level (Agro
climatic zone wise as well as district wise) “ to the Govt. of Tamil Nadu as part of the State
3. Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC).
Responsibilities
• Implementation of RegCM4 regional climate model by downscaling the model up to 25 km
using the outputs from GFDL and CCSM4 global climate models as boundary conditions to
assess uncertainties and project future climate change over the South Asian countries by
analyzing temperature and rainfall variability with various sensitivity experiments.
• Experience in calibration, validation, installation, building libraries for PRECIS, a regional
climate model, developed by Hadley centre- Met office, UK to predict the future climate
change scenarios for the whole India. The model is run with 25km resolution using different
baseline Lateral Boundary Conditions (LBCs) from the Global Climate Model (GCM) -
HadCM3Q at the emission rate of SRES A1B scenarios. Based on the model performance,
six member ensembles running over a period of 130 years in each experiment are utilized
from 17-member perturbed-physics ensemble (HADCM3Q0-Q16). Research goal is to design
and develop tools, techniques and methods relevant to climate change which will be useful
for research people to do Vulnerability and Impact assessment in various sectors like
Agriculture, Forestry, Health, Water Resources, Coastal Management etc at a regional level
with an aim to ease the life of a common man.
• Responsible for various numerical models simulations in operational suites and result
validations to diagnose model biases over the south Asian countries.
• Development experience in Unified Model (UM), developed by UK met office, UK. The
NCMRWF version of the Unified Model (NCUM), which also has high resolution (N512L70),
used to produce forecasts out to day-10. The NCUM at a horizontal resolution of about 25 km
(global)/4 km (regional)/1.5 km (regional) and 70 levels/ 80 levels in the vertical along with its
associated 4D-VAR data assimilation scheme is used for generating the initial conditions.
Responsible in performance evaluation of the NCUM models in predicting the circulation and
rainfall associated with the monsoon depressions.
