IIT Delhi to organize 8th SciTech Spins Lecture for school students on April 23

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi’s Centre for Atmospheric Sciences professor Yama Dixit will deliver the eighth SciTech Spins lecture titled ‘Learning from the Past - Climate and Civilization Changes’ for school kids on April 23. The lecture will also be live streamed on the IIT Delhi’s official YouTube channel.

Also Read | IIT Madras professors granted advance bail in sexual assault case

The lecture will address questions such as ‘Rainfall and elemental isotopes: How are they related? Would you believe that the Thar desert in Northwest India was once a densely populated region? How can the ocean bed be used as an archive of past climate changes? How are the 'natural climate experiments' recorded in lakes and oceans? Could climate change have caused ancient civilizations to collapse? How close are we to a climate catastrophe on this warming Earth?

IIT Delhi Science lecture series

“The Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate, and it is unknown as to how various climate processes such as monsoon rainfall will change in response to this warming. In the past, Earth has witnessed warmer and colder periods than present. Past history of Earth’s climate can help us better understand the future changes in climate processes in projected warming,” said an official statement from IIT Delhi.

Dixit said, “In this lecture, I will talk about how to reconstruct the past climate using the chemistry of natural materials like lake and ocean sediments, which store information of past rainfall and temperature variability.”

Also Read | IIT Madras, National Health Mission team up to jointly reduce maternal mortality rate

The SciTech Spins lecture series is an academic outreach initiative by IIT Delhi for the school students especially from classes 9 to 12. The Institute gives e-certificates to all registered students nominated by their respective schools who attend the lecture.

These students will also be invited to 'Open House', an annual intellectual fest organised by IIT Delhi, which provides an ideal platform to school students to connect with some of the leading researchers in the field of science and technology.