CABINET APPROVES “DEEP OCEAN MISSION” TO PROVIDE PROJECTIONS OF SEA LEVEL RISE

Recently the Cabinet has approved a mission mode programme “Deep Ocean Mission” to be implemented by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India. One of the objectives of this Mission, among other things, is to provide projections of sea level rise along the coast of India under the various climate change scenarios. As an outcome of this project, a suite of interactive GIS maps identifying vulnerable areas and possible inundation scenarios will be prepared.

INCOIS, an autonomous institute of MoES has acquired the baseline Airborne Lidar Terrain Mapping (ALTM) elevation data from National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), under ISRO for the Tsunami Inundation modelling and vulnerability mapping. This data is available for the main land Indian coast up to two kilometres from the coast and would be used for predicting the sea-level rise.

As part of Indian Tsunami Early Warning System, INCOIS has established a real-time network of 36 tide gauges at different locations along the Indian coast to monitor the tsunami waves and provide timely advisories.