3C warming

Lincolnshire’s flat, low-lying agricultural plains, which stretch north from the fens, curling around the Wash to Skegness and Grimsby, have long been a frontline of mankind’s battle to claim and protect food-producing land from the sea.

But with sea levels rising, a managed retreat is underway that threatens to become a full-scale rout if global temperatures rise by 3C. The UN warns that they will unless governments take far more drastic action to reduce emissions.

Europe facing drought

Europe’s Atlantic-facing countries will suffer heavier rainfalls, greater flood risk, more severe storm damage and an increase in “multiple climatic hazards”, according to the most comprehensive study of Europe’s vulnerability to climate change yet.

Temperatures in mountain ranges such as the Alps and the Pyrenees are predicted to soar to glacier-melting levels, while the Mediterranean faces a “drastic” increase in heat extremes, droughts, crop failure and forest fires.

Europe and the entire northern hemisphere are warming at a quicker pace than elsewhere, to the extent that tropical diseases such as West Nile fever are expected to spread across northern France by mid-century.

Hans-Martin Füssel, one of the lead authors of the European Environment Agency report, said that scientific evidence was pointing increasingly to a speeding up in the pace of climate change.

world's sinking cities face devastating floods

London, Jakarta, Shanghai and Houston and other global cities that are already sinking will become increasingly vulnerable to storms and flooding as a result of global warming, campaigners have warned ahead of a landmark new report on climate science.

The threat to cities from sea level rises is increasing because city planners are failing to prepare, the charity Christian Aid said in the report. Some big cities are already subsiding – the ground beneath Shanghai, for instance, is being pressed down by the sheer weight of the buildings above – and rising sea levels resulting from global warming will make the effects worse.

The cities named in the report are sinking for a variety of reasons. Jakarta is thought to be subsiding by 25cm a year largely because of groundwater extraction, and Houston is sinking as the oil wells beneath it are depleted. Bangkok’s skyscrapers are weighing it down, while London is slowly sinking for geological reasons: Scotland is slowly rebounding after having been weighed down by glaciers during the last ice age, which is pushing southern England downwards like a see-saw.

Gurgaon’s Durga Puja pandals unite for a green immersion.

Twelve Durga Puja committees from across the Millennium City have joined hands this year to start a large-scale eco-friendly idol immersion process after the puja concludes later this month Usually, most committees take their idols to the Yamuna for immersion. This year, however, a dozen committees from Gurgaon have formed the Joint Puja Committee, which will prepare a makeshift pond in Sector 56 for a mass immersion and then cover the pond with earth afterward. 

PPCB say Punjab not to blame for Delhi pollution, points to air quality 

The Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) said on Saturday that vehicular and industrial emissions were the main cause of pollution in the national capital region (NCR) of Delhi and not farmers in Punjab who burnt paddy stuble. 

Climate changing faster than feared!

With only one degree Celsius of warming so far, the planet is reeling from a crescendo of lethal and costly extreme weather events made worse by climate change. 

(IPCC) report on  the rise in Earth's surface temperature at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels has not been finalised yet. 

Relax environment norms for export growth, say pharmaceutical firms

Pharmaceutical companies have asked for abolition of stringent environment norms and goods and service tax benefits to boost competitiveness and export.

According to the Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council, domestic companies exported pharmaceuticals worth $ 17.2 billion in FY 18. Between April-July in FY 19 companies exported $5.9 billion worth medicines and exports grew 13.4 percent.

IPCC to vet and validate a report on limiting global warming.

PARIS: The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which complies comprehensive reviews of climate science, meet this week to vet and validate a report on limiting global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius. Its mandate is to give policymakers neutral, science based updates about global warming its impacts bringing the problem under control. An intergovernmental body, IPCC currently counts 195 nations as members.

DEADLY HEAT WAVES COULD HIT INDIA : CLIMATE CHANGE REPORT

The news was published on 8th october,2018 in THE TIMES OF INDIA.

According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), India could face annual threat of deadly heatwaves, if the world gets warmer by 2 degree celsius over the pre industrial levels and this become the much anticipated world's biggest report on climate change.

In the Indian Subcontinent, the IPCC report specifically mentions that Kolkata and Karachi among cities that could face an increased threat of heat waves.

The main findings were:

• Deadlier heatwaves in India and Pakisthan
• Rise in vector borne diseases like Malaria and Dengue
• Many megacities become heat stressed, exposing more than 350 million more people to deadly heat by 2050.
• Increase in poverty.

Large-scale US wind power would cause warming that would take roughly a century to offset

Extracting energy from the wind causes climatic impacts that are small compared to current projections of 21st century warming, but large compared to the effect of reducing US electricity emissions to zero with solar. Researchers report the most accurate modelling yet of how increasing wind power would affect climate, finding that large-scale wind power generation would warm the Continental United States 0.24 degrees Celsius because wind turbines redistribute heat in the atmosphere.

Climate changing faster than feared, but why are we surprised?

Studies on global warming warn that the deadly impacts will come and affects sooner and hit a harder than once thought. The previous predictions of future heat waves, droughts, storms, floods or rising seas were overblown. The intergovernmental panel on climate change ( IPCC ) report on capping the rise in the earth surface temperature at 1.5 degree Celsius.

'Turbidity currents' are not just currents, but involve movement of the seafloor itself

Turbidity currents have historically been described as fast-moving currents that sweep down submarine canyons, carrying sand and mud into the deep sea. But a new paper in Nature Communications shows that, rather than just consisting of sediment-laden seawater flowing over the seafloor, turbidity currents also involve large-scale movements of the seafloor itself. This dramatic discovery, the result of an 18-month-long, multi-institutional study of Monterey Canyon, could help ocean engineers avoid damage to pipelines, communications cables, and other seafloor structures.

Why huskies have blue eyes

DNA testing of more than 6,000 dogs has revealed that a duplication on canine chromosome 18 is strongly associated with blue eyes in Siberian Huskies, according to a study published October 4, 2018, in the open-access journal PLOS Genetics by Adam Boyko and Aaron Sams of Embark Veterinary, Inc., and colleagues. Embark is a dog DNA startup company headquartered in Boston, MA, and Ithaca, NY, and research partner of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. According to the authors, this represents the first consumer genomics study ever conducted in a non-human model and the largest canine genome-wide association study to date.

Govt plans Rs 65,000-crore project to reduce greenhouse gases from agriculture

India is set to roll out its most integrated programme yet to cut greenhouse gases from agriculture. The project is primarily aimed at protecting the country’s five biggest vulnerable ecological landscapes, according to a two officials familiar with the matter.

The programme will cover Madhya Pradesh’s Chambal region, Dampa in Mizoram, Odisha’s Similipal, Jaisalmer and Barmer in Rajasthan besides a national wildlife corridor through Uttarakhand, the officials said.

The programme, involving the agriculture and environment ministries, is part of a global initiative of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a partnership 183 countries, including India.

Agriculture activities are widely known to emit three kinds of harmful gases: carbon dioxide from soil cultivation, methane from livestock and nitrous oxide from fertilizers. Greenhouse emissions are a significant driver of climate change by trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere and causing global warming, according to FAO

Myanmar burns ivory, skins to fight illegal wildlife trade.

$ 1.3 million worth of confiscated ivory and other parts of endangered animals were burned authorities in Myanmar. The country's ivory exports to China were increased when after the conversation group is charged. The items which are destroyed in Tuesday are 277 piece of ivory, 227 bones of elephant and other animals, 1544 different horns and 25 wildlife skins. Destroyed parts were raise to public awareness about the illegal wildlife trade.

Tiny sphere can trap water pollutant-  source The Hindu

• Scientists have created tiny sphere that can catch and destroy bis phenol A (BPA), a synthetic chemical used to make plastics that often contaminates water.
•  BPA is commonly used to coat the insides food cans, bottle tops and water supply lines and once it was a component of baby bottles also.
• BPA that seeps into  food and drink is considered safe in low dose but more usage can affect the  health contributing to high blood pressure.
•  A sphere similar to Venus' flytrap of particles for water remediation was developed by  a university based on US.
• The micron-sized spheres is like a tiny flower like collections of titanium dioxide petals.
• This flexible petals provide plenty of surface area to anchor cylcodextrin which is used in food and drugs.
• It is basically a two faced structure- Hydrophobic cavity and Hydrophilic outer surface.
• BPA is hydrophobic,once it is trapped the relative oxygen species produced by the sphere degrades BPA to harmless chemicals.
• It is found that 200mg of the sphere per liter of contaminated water degraded 90% of BPA in an hour.
• The size of the particle is less than 100 nanometers.

Environment Ministry to act as nodal agency for NCZ: NGT

Green tribunal Bench dismisses its review petition

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) held that the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has to act as the nodal agency to ascertain whether the sub-regional plans for protection of National Conservation Zones (NCZ) prepared by the States are in consonance with the regional plans prepared by the National Capital Region Planning Board. The green panel earlier dismissed a review petition moved by the Environment Ministry.

A Bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel observed, “Review of the order has been sought for to the extent that instead of MoEF&CC, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs [MoHUA], be made the nodal agency as the latter Ministry has the mandate and resources to accomplish the job of finalisation of revised regional plan of the National Capital Region [NCR] being undertaken.”

Source: The Hindu