Department of Atmospheric Sciences

The Department of Atmospheric Sciences is a centre of excellence in teaching as well as research in the field of Meteorology/Atmospheric Sciences and is located in the serene and beautiful Lakeside Campus of the Cochin University of Science and Technology. The Department started offering a 4-semester M.Sc. programme in Meteorology since 1975 and a 4- semester M.Tech programme in Atmospheric Science since 1989. The course content of all the above courses is of international standard updating every 3 years.

The University Grants Commission has selected the Department of Atmospheric Sciences for the Special Assistance Programme (SAP) based on the quality of teaching, academic achievements, research in thrust area and viable potential for future development. The essence and primary aim of SAP of the UGC is the combination of teaching and research to encourage group research efforts in pursuit of excellence in the field of Atmospheric Science.

As per the scheme of the Government of India entitled New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI) on Mesoscale Modeling for monsoon related predictions, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has identified the Department of Atmospheric Sciences as one of Centres of Excellence to carry out research work in the frontier areas along with other premier centres such as Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; Indian
Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune ; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay; C-MMACS, Bangalore and National Aeronautical Laboratory, Bangalore.

UGC has also identified this Department as the Nodal Centre for introducing Computer Application Course at the Post Graduate level and extending lectures to other selected Departments of the University. Special funding is provided to the Department for conducting the course.

The Department has high speed computational facilities, automatic weather station and have fullfledged surface weather observatory. It has also set up a data bank, which has NCEP/NCAR reanalysis global data from 1958 to 2003 and Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite Data of NASA from 1992 to 1994 besides data from India MST Radar (Tirupati) received on a daily basis from 1996 to 1999 and TOMS total ozone data (1974-1994)

A collaborative research project entitled WAVELET ANALYSIS OF FREQUENCY SPECTRA FOR MONSOON RAINFALL has been started with Florida State University, USA under the DST NSF programme. The Department has also entered into collaboration with national institutes like ISRO, IITM, C-MMACS, DOD etc. A proposal is underway for a possible Indo- UK collaboration under Higher Education Link Programme.