Biography

Dr. Rijan Bhakta Kayastha has 25 years of experience on the Himalayan glaciology, glacio-hydrological modeling and mountain hydrology and meteorology. His higher education M. Sc., D. Sc. and JSPS Postdoc was from Nagoya University, Japan and Max-Planck Postdoc from Max-Plank Institute for Bio-geochemistry, Germany. His research areas includes understanding of glacier mass balance by field and modeling techniques, impacts of climate change impact on glaciers and water resources, understanding of glacier variation by field observation, remote sensing and modeling techniques, estimation of ablation by energy balance and positive degree-day models, estimation of current and future discharges from glacierized river basins using different glacio-hydrological models and future climate data, glacier-climate interaction, snow and glacier hydrology of mountain region, extreme weather events, glacial hazard such as glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF), flood and GLOF early warning systems and water and climate induced disaster risk reduction. He has developed a glacier mass balance model and a Glacio-hydrological Degree-day Model (GDM). His two major projects are the Cryosphere Monitoring Project (CMP) since August 2011 supported by the Royal Norwegian Government through the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and Contribution of High Asia Runoff from Ice and Snow (CHARIS) since April 2012 supported by USAID through the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO, USA (completed in September 2018). He is also a Team member of NASA HiMAT Project I (2016-2019) and II (2020-2022) in which he has contributed through GDM.