2015 2015: UMass Dartmouth hosts international workshop on monsoon research

This May UMass Dartmouth hosted 50 scientists from 19 institutions in the U.S. and India a conference to discuss their planned research cruise in the Bay of Bengal to study monsoons.

This May UMass Dartmouth hosted 50 scientists from 19 institutions in the U.S. and India a conference to discuss their planned research cruise in the Bay of Bengal to study monsoons. Funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and India's Office of Earth Sciences, the multi-institutional research team is led by two co-Chief Scientists, UMass Dartmouth's Professor Amit Tandon and Oregon State University's Professor Jonathan Nash. The Office of Naval Research Physical Oceanography Program's Dr. Terri Paluszkiewicz was also on campus for this meeting. 

Monsoons, cyclones, and adverse weather events bring human and economic devastation in India, Nepal, and other Asian countries. Also present for the workshop were Professor Debasis Sengupta from the Indian Institute of Science and and Dr. M. Ravichandran, Deputy Director and Senior Scientist of the Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services. Professor Tandon -- one of the co-Chief Scientists in the ASIRI (Air-Sea Interactions in the Northern Indian Ocean Regional Initiative), funded by the ONR and by India's Ministry of Earth Sciences -- and his colleagues will study the initiation and predictability of monsoons and adverse weather events, examining the unique interactions between air and sea processes in a research cruise this coming fall in the Northern Indian Ocean.