State to suffer more sandstorms: Scientists

  • 19/04/2011

  • Times Of India (Jaipur)

AJMER: The Union ministry of earth sciences predicts that Rajasthan will have huge sandstorms in the future as an effect of climate change. The state is now in the danger zone 3 of earthquake. The ministry has decided to build observatories in various parts of the country to calculate the climatic conditions. Talking about the plans of ministry, advisor and scientist of the ministry M Sudhakar said on Sunday, "It is necessary to get maximum use of the technology to predict the calamities beforehand." Sudhakar came here to inaugurate the three-day seminar of data users' in Regional Institute of Education on Sunday, in which scientists of five states are participating. He said, "Climate change is affecting every part of the world and it was seen in Australia and now in Japan, we are observing the effect of these changes in India and found that Rajasthan will have bigger storms." He further said, the storms in western parts of the state have started shaping and it will move towards north and east. The ministry has taken the task to calculate the change so we could predict the situation. Talking on geological changes, the advisor said, "We are learning a lesson from the Japan disaster and the first thing we did is to check the places where the nuclear plants are situated in India." He added, "It is like we are carrying bomb in our pocket, though the nuclear power is Bramhastra' for us but it is us who have to be conscious of it." He agreed that globe is changing and the data they are receiving from various sources is the only key to help us in prediction of this change. "What is needed now is the coordination of all and every department." Regarding future plans, Sudhaker said, "like sunami and cyclone, we are trying to build an earthquake alert system in India, At present the Hyderabad INCOIS institute alert by SMS the costal people for cyclone and sunami before half an hour." He added, "At present it is not possible but we are trying to start this service for earthquakes." "The three-days seminar will work on the use of data provided by remote sensing or by other source for geological and geographical use," said Sulakhna Chatopadhya, coordinator of this programme from LIGHT. Scientists like P Nag, director of National Atlas and Thematic Mapping and Siva Kumar of the department of science and technology are participating in it.