• Webinar was live telecasted on COMSATS Secretariat YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFefo-PXt0s&ab_channel=COMSATSSecretariat).

• Webinar was started with the welcome remarks of worthy Amb. Mohammad Nafees Zakaria, from COMSATS Secretariat. He elaborated the aim of webinar, which is to enhance the understanding of the impacts of El-Nino on Global south. He further emphasized on fostering the South-South cooperation in areas such as technology transfer, resource sharing and capacity building.

• Dr zaheer Ahmed Baber, Director National Weather Forecasting Center, PMD Islamabad acts as a moderator of the webinar.

• Dr Ahad Vazifeh, Phd Meteorology, Director National Center for Climate Services and Drought Monitoring, Iran National Meteorological Organization gave a presentation on “Understanding El-Nino and its relationship with Climate Change”. Dr Ahad briefed about the El-Nino Forecast for 2023/2024 weather season. Active El-nino is forecasted over the upcoming fall season. He shared teleconnection of El-Nino with Precipitation and position of subtropical jet stream.

• Dr. Vanissa Surapipith Ph.D. Depty Director of Thailand’s Hub of Talent on Air Pollution and Climate, Collaborating Center for Clean Air and Climate Change presented her session on “Impacts on El-Nino on Air Quality and interaction with the monsoon system in Southeast Asia”. She addressed that ENSO accounts for approximately 33% of PM10 annual amplitude variation.      

• Prof. Dr. Dambaru Ballab Kattel, Associate Professor Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research Chinese Academy of Sciences, talked about ENSO and discussed that ENSO is a natural phenomenon and presently no model is being made to predict ENSO accurately on decadal scale.

• Dr. Sher Muhammad, Cryosphere Specialist participated on behalf of Prof. Fei Zheng. Dr. Sher enlightened the participants about “Increasing Risk from Glaciers and Snow in a Changing Climate”. He shared snow anomaly (November 2022-May 2023) and said that exceptional snow cover in the Hindukush Karakoram and Himalaya region this winter with a remarkable 53 % above normal which will impact all the major river basin in future.

• Closing remarks for this webinar were from Dr. Mehwish Qayyum Durani, Additional Director, International Cooperation and Head CCCS, COMSATS Headquarters.

• Only one question was entertained by the panel due to paucity of time and adaptation strategies were not specifically discussed during the webinar.

Mr. Muhammad Ali, Research Associate at CCRD, presented CCRD at the webinar.