Dr Parvinder Maini, Scientific Secretary, Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, chaired the session titled ‘A CERN for Climate Change’, during ESTIC 2026 on 28 October 2026. The plenary talk was delivered by Prof. Tim Palmer, CBE FRS, Royal Society Research Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, University of Oxford.
Prof. Palmer pioneered the development of the first ensemble prediction system for probabilistic weather and climate prediction and based on this, the ensemble forecasting frameworks have been deployed in India at the institutes under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
Prof. Palmer, in his talk, highlighted the need for international scientific collaboration to improve the understanding and prediction of climate change. He outlined the limitations of current climate models in capturing complex atmospheric and ocean dynamics. He emphasised the potential of dedicated exascale computing and AI techniques to develop next-generation climate models and support better climate predictions and adaptation.
While thanking the speaker, Dr Maini brought out the relevance of the topic at a time when the world is facing the adverse effects of climate change, in particular the Indian sub-continent. She complimented the speaker for highlighting that climate change should be seen through the dynamical aspects along with the thermodynamical aspects for which the climate models should have a km-scale resolution.
Watch the full session here:
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