The Mega Science Vision-2035 report on Climate Research warns that India has nearly lost its capacity to manufacture domestic scientific instruments, creating a severe reliance on imported equipment. Prepared by the Indian climate research community with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, as the nodal institution, the roadmap was submitted to the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA). It highlights that using imported equipment without regular calibration over long periods has led to incorrect data reporting, threatening the credibility of Indian science. The report recommends deploying an indigenous Earth System Model and executing eight priority mega projects to secure precise, region-specific climate intelligence.
Challenges in Indigenous Instrument Manufacturing
Supply Chain Dependency and Data Inaccuracy
- India relies heavily on foreign-made climate sensors, deep-ocean buoys, and laboratory hardware.
- Imported instruments frequently operate without proper recalibration for multiple years, generating data discrepancies that filter into national and international journals.
- Reliance on foreign baseline metrics limits the precision of tracking regional variations, such as the behavior of the Indian summer monsoon.
Procurement Policy Bottlenecks
- The mandatory use of the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal forces public research laboratories to procure hardware from the lowest-bidding India-registered vendor (L1 procurement rule).
- Local vendors on the portal often lack the technical capacity to build specialized, highly customized scientific equipment.
- Opting out of the local system to float global tenders introduces prolonged bureaucratic delays, stalling critical climate monitoring timelines.
The Renewable Energy Research Gap
- The rapid expansion of solar and wind energy plants across India remains poorly understood regarding long-term, localized climate feedbacks.
- Uncontrolled tapping of natural resources for large-scale green energy installations alters local surface albedo (solar radiation reflectivity) and micro-climate patterns.
- Current research infrastructures lack the high-precision instruments required to measure the environmental costs of these clean energy transitions.
Strategic Framework of Mega Science Vision-2035
Methodological Reforms and Carbon Pricing
- The report suggests devising precise scientific methods to compute the social cost of carbon, which measures the economic damage caused by an additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions.
- It advocates a practical regulatory mechanism to enforce the “polluter pays” principle, ensuring that industries pay for using the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas repository.
- The framework aims to integrate environment-surveillance infrastructure directly with public health systems to track climate-sensitive diseases and environmental epidemiology.
The Eight Priority Mega Science Projects
The roadmap outlines eight core structural deployments, distributed across three distinct five-year operational blocks until 2035. The financial projections range from a modest growth scenario of ₹795 crore to an aspirational track of ₹1,359 crore.
| Priority Project | Core Scientific Objective | Expected Outcome |
| Observational Networks | Expand automated weather tracking systems and deep-ocean observation buoys. | Elimination of data blindspots across the Indian Ocean and subcontinental landmass. |
| Indigenous Instrument R&D | Set up domestic manufacturing lines for advanced climate sensors and laboratory instruments. | Elimination of long-term reliance on imported western calibration technologies. |
| Remote Sensing Satellites | Deploy dedicated space assets tailored for greenhouse gas, cloud dynamics, and Himalayan tracking. | High-resolution spatial imaging independent of foreign space data agencies. |
| India-Specific Climate Models | Construct regionally tailored, high-resolution models using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML). | Improved accuracy in monsoon behavior forecasting and extreme weather prediction. |
| Earth System Model Upgrades | Build an indigenous Earth System Model (ESM) developed from first principles. | Rebalancing models away from US/European baseline designs to fit tropical realities. |
| Thematic Field Campaigns | Run large-scale, coordinated experiments on aerosols, urban heat islands, and the cryosphere. | Mapping micro-climate feedback loops inside dense metro cities and glacial zones. |
| Carbon-Neutrality Research | Engineering targeted technologies for carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). | Operationalizing technical pathways to fulfill India’s national 2070 net-zero targets. |
| Adaptation & Resilience Science | Formulate economic frameworks to quantify climate damages and build localized resistance. | Establishment of national observatories linking environmental stress data to public health impacts. |
IASPOINT Booster Facts for UPSC
- Nodal Agency for MSV-2035 Climate Report: Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. The working group was chaired by IISc Professor S.K. Satheesh and former INCOIS director S.S.C. Shenoi.
- The Six Domains of MSV-2035: The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser conducts the Mega Science Vision exercise across six areas: High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Accelerator Science & Technology, Climate Research, and Ecology & Environmental Science.
- India’s Renewable Milestones: India pledged to install 500 GW of non-fossil fuel electricity capacity by 2030. The country officially crossed the halfway mark of its total installed capacity coming from non-fossil sources in 2025, meeting its intermediate Paris Agreement goal ahead of schedule.
- Albedo Effect in Climate Science: It is the measure of the diffuse reflection of solar radiation out of the total solar radiation received by an astronomical body. Large-scale solar photovoltaic farms decrease local surface albedo, absorbing more heat and potentially creating localized warming effects.
- Social Cost of Carbon (SCC): An economic metric representing the total damages caused by the emission of one additional metric ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a given year.