Indian Scientists Use Magnetic Minerals for Climate Change Forecasting

The scientists from the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, have related climate change with magnetic minerals. According to them, magnetic mineralogy can be used effectively in this regard because it responds to changes in chemical and physical processes that result in concentration, grain size and mineralogy changes.

During the course of this research, Mr Praveen Gawali and his team members have studied sediment samples from different environment and climactic domains in India to understand the information stored in the magnetic minerals, pertaining to magnetic susceptibility, anhysteretic magnetization, saturation induced remnant magnetization, hysteresis loops and Curie temperature.

These studies have pointed out four kinds of regional climatic features in the Indian subcontinent and one localized climatic event. Overall, the study will help in identifying the climatic changes with more accuracy and speed.

Background

Climatic studies are carried out now with the help of several proxies such as fossils, microorganisms, gases trapped in ice etc. but all these methods take a lot of time and are also very expensive. In this regard, the researchers at the IIG have come out with a new technique to understand the climate changes in the Indian subcontinent.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2020