Uttarakhand, Roorkee : Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee have released INDRA-CMIP6, a high-resolution open-access climate projection dataset for the Indian subcontinent that provides daily rainfall and temperature projections at nearly 10 km spatial resolution across historical and future climate scenarios. Developed to support local-scale climate adaptation and risk assessment, the dataset addresses a major limitation of global climate models, whose coarse resolution often fails to capture India’s complex terrain, monsoon variability, and regional climate extremes.
India is already experiencing the impacts of a changing climate, including rising temperatures, erratic monsoons, urban flooding, heat stress on workers and crops, and increased pressure on water resources. Adaptation decisions, such as strengthening embankments, planning urban drainage systems, or selecting climate-resilient crops, require projections at district and river-basin scales rather than continental averages.
Developed at the Department of Hydrology, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, and published in Scientific Data (Nature Portfolio), INDRA-CMIP6 downscales outputs from 14 CMIP6 global climate models using the Double Bias-Corrected Constructed Analogue (DBCCA) method. This statistical downscaling approach improves the representation of daily weather variability, regional rainfall patterns, and temperature extremes.
The dataset provides daily precipitation and minimum and maximum temperature data at 0.1° × 0.1° resolution. It includes both individual model outputs and a multi-model ensemble, enabling researchers and planners to compare projections and assess uncertainty rather than rely on a single model pathway.
Technical validation shows that INDRA-CMIP6 substantially reduces the systematic errors in raw global climate model outputs and improves the representation of extreme rainfall and extreme temperature days. These improvements matter most where local geography, monsoon dynamics, and topography drive risk, precisely the conditions that define the Indian subcontinent.
The dataset includes four Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), which are not predictions but scientifically designed possibilities for how the future climate may evolve under different development and emissions choices. SSP1-2.6 represents a low-emission, sustainable future in which strong climate action and cleaner energy help limit warming. SSP2-4.5 represents a middle-of-the-road future in which the world continues broadly along current development trends with some climate action but still experiences significant warming. SSP3-7.0 represents a high-emission, more challenging future marked by weaker cooperation, slower climate action, and greater difficulty in adaptation. SSP5-8.5 represents a very high-emission, fossil-fuel-intensive future, often used to examine a worst-case warming pathway in which heatwaves, extreme rainfall, and other climate risks may intensify substantially. Including all four scenarios lets researchers and planners compare how India’s climate risks differ under stronger mitigation versus higher-emission futures.
A central feature of INDRA-CMIP6 is open access. The ensemble datasets are available through Zenodo, and the full downscaled and bias-corrected outputs for individual models are available through Google Drive. At approximately 2.4 TB, it is one of the most detailed open climate data resources currently available for the Indian subcontinent.
The dataset is intended for university researchers, government departments, river basin authorities, disaster management agencies, urban planners, and agricultural institutions, among others. It can support basin-scale hydrological modelling, flood and drought risk assessment, climate-resilient infrastructure planning, agricultural impact studies, and localised adaptation strategies. The initiative aligns with India’s broader priorities on climate resilience, disaster risk reduction, sustainable water management, and evidence-based planning under national and global sustainability frameworks.
“India’s climate risks are highly localised, especially across monsoon-driven and mountainous regions. Fine-scale climate projections such as INDRA-CMIP6 are critical for translating global climate science into actionable information for planners, researchers, and policymakers. Open access to such datasets strengthens scientific collaboration and supports informed climate adaptation strategies,” said Prof. Ankit Agarwal, Department of Hydrology, IIT Roorkee.
“Climate change presents one of the most significant challenges of our time, and scientific institutions have a critical responsibility to develop accessible and reliable knowledge resources for society. INDRA-CMIP6 reflects IIT Roorkee’s commitment to advancing high-impact research that supports climate resilience, sustainable development, and evidence-based policymaking for India and the wider region,” said Prof. Kamal Kishore Pant, Director, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.