Forecasting for Meaningful Climate Solutions
Puja Das, MS’22, PhD’25, civil and environmental engineering, grew up in Bangladesh, where she saw there was a need for intensive research on the climate. She has dedicated her studies to finding the most accurate and precise forecasting models to help prepare for and mitigate climate disasters.
Puja Das received her undergraduate degree in Bangladesh from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, where she studied water resources engineering. Growing up in the coastal country of Bangladesh, Das saw many concerning issues regarding precipitation and the climate. Realizing the vital work that needed to be done in the environmental industry, Das decided to pursue a PhD in civil and environmental engineering, and received a master’s degree along the way.
While in the master’s program, Das added a concentration in data and systems to improve her skills in computer science and prepare her to work with complex data. During her master’s, Das completed a thesis which offered an evaluation of system models predicting water availability in different river basins around the world.
Throughout her PhD program and post-doctoral studies, Das has been researching at the Sustainability and Data Sciences (SDS) Lab with COE Distinguished Professor Auroop Ganguly. Das says, “At the lab, we research a vast number of topics that are all related to climate change and adaptation. Our research covers topics like transportation, ecology, health, climate science and climate finance.” Das says one of the unique things about the SDS Lab is the diversity of topics and how all the researchers will share their respective research with each other to contribute to impactful solutions for the climate and environment.
Das specifically focuses on precipitation, and how to forecast precipitation using machine learning, AI and remote sensing. Additionally, she explores how these tools can be used for improving flood emergency management and how climate change may impact water availability in the future. She is the de facto lead for a NASA-funded project on remote sensing data-driven hybrid physics-AI approach for precipitation nowcasting, and the science lead for a project on weather and uncertainty funded by Air Force Weather, where she focuses on precipitation and runoff.
Impactful Research on the Climate
Das and the TVA team on site.
Das has had three of her research papers successfully published in academic journals. The first paper she published was in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, and was in collaboration with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Zeus AI. This paper focused on precipitation forecasting and how it is helping river managers and dam operators make informed decisions. The TVA manages a big reverse system with 49 dams that provide electricity to around 10 million people in Tennessee and the surrounding states. They need to have an accurate forecast of precipitation in case there are flash floods. Das implemented a generative AI model integrated with physics for the TVA for precipitation forecasting. The TVA is now working to integrate the model in its operational system. This has been a huge achievement for Das, and she is excited for the future of her forecasting model.
Das’s second paper that has been published explores water runoff and how water availability has changed over the last 40 years. Specifically, she discusses places where the population has been increasing, and at the same time, runoff has been decreasing. These places also tend to have lower human development indexes and GDP per capita. Das looked at how water scarcity will impact these regions in the future by evaluating models within CMIP6—a state-of-the-art database for climate models— for 30 major river basins. Das looked at how the models were performing and ranked them from best to worst, and how the future might look for each river basin.
An evaluation of all her models suggested to Das that 260 million people may be impacted by a decrease in water availability in the near future. Limiting her survey to just the top five models that were the most skillful (based on meteorological quantitative measure), and the number predicted to be impacted jumped to 850 million. Das says this research is vital since water availability affects many sectors, including agriculture and energy which ultimately impacts society as a whole. She also stresses the importance of continuously improving climate models to accurately predict climate crises so scientists and engineers can be better equipped to develop solutions to these issues.
In Das’s third paper, she dove deeper into studying these climate models and how to better understand and analyze them. Das and her research team found that using nonlinear dynamical approaches helps to better understand internal climate variability. Sometimes, climate models can show vastly different predictions even when they are looking at the same data, making it difficult to determine the best course of action. Das asserts that using advanced mathematical tools to analyze the insights can improve decision-making and understanding of the climate models. Further, improving how individuals understand these models makes predictions more accurate, which helps to mitigate climate disasters.
The Importance of Studying the Climate
Das is fervently dedicated to studying climate change and the impacts of this crisis on the environment and society. She is focused on developing the best, most accurate forecasting models to predict heavy precipitation and flash floods to diminish exposure to dangerous conditions. When studying the climate, Das says that “We have to understand the world of science and also employ engineering tools to solve those problems. For me, it’s a very important thing to look at the weather, because it’s short-term, and we have to make decisions fast enough. If we are not taking actions now, in the future we will not be ready.”
Looking Ahead
Das believes education is essential to addressing the climate crisis. She finds teaching deeply fulfilling and has assisted Professor Ganguly in both on-campus and study-abroad courses, helping students grasp the environmental challenges she’s dedicated her career to understanding. Currently completing her postdoctoral studies, Das plans to continue in academia, where she can combine research and teaching to advance understanding of environmental and weather systems.