The report discusses the climate condition over Indian region during the year 2023. Notably, global temperatures soared to exceptionally high levels during this period (WMO.No.1347). The India Meteorological Department continuously monitors weather and climate over Indian region. The annual mean land surface air temperature averaged over India during 2023 was …
AS THE earth grows warmer, the battle between insurance and energy industries is heating up. The insurance executives have teamed up with international climate change experts. Around 60 big insurance companies met recently in London to chalk out ways of improving the management of environmental risks that are costing their …
MANAGED by the Danish Polar Centre - a monitoring and research body in the country -ZERO is located in the Zackenberg mountains of the national park (NP) in northeast Greenland. According to scientists at the station, the pristine conditions of the park will prove to be an excellent site to …
THE record highs of summer, this past, year in the us, could be attributed to the phenomenon of global warming. But what about the blizzard of 1996 which lashed throughout northeastern us, depositing more than 50 cm of snow in most areas, dipping mercury levels and paralysing normal life? The …
A STUDY conducted by British researchers concluded that with rising mercury levels, temperate farmlands face a potential threat in the form of insecticide-resistant aphids (insects of the Homopteran order, which live on plant juices). The aphid population had till date been kept under check due to winter frost, but when …
THE well-being of any species is dependent on the natural environment it exists in. A recent report on the effect of climate change on human health released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggests that the rise in global temperatures could directly or indirectly affect human health (Science …
IT WAS the inexorable hand of climate that spurred human evolution. This is the latest finding of Peter researcher, working with the University of Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Observatory, us. No one knows for c tain what first forced huntoem remote ape-like ancestors to forsa the trees they called home, why so …
WHY is a city hotter than its surrounding countryside? The first answer that comes to mind is the availability of open space and trees in the countryside. Now, Haider Taha and his colleagues at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) in Berkeley, California, and the University of California, Los Angeles, say …
SINCE time immemorial, people have believed that the moon influences Earth's climate. Although many such beliefs remain unsubstantiated, very recent research by a group of American climatologists shows a significant emperical relation between lunar phases and daily temperatures on Earth over the past 15 years (Science, vol 1267 no 5203). …
The ozone layer over the Antarctica was nearly as severely depleted in November last year as it was in 1993, when it reached a record low, reveal several airborne and space sensors. According to Richard Bevilacqua of the US Naval Research Laboratory, ozone levels began falling in May 1994, and …
THE ozone layer protects the earth's surface from the harmful effects of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Ozone depletion would therefore imply an increase in UV radiation which, scientists fear, could lead to an increase in skin cancer and cataracts, and perhaps adversely affect agricultural systems. But now climatologists point …
HAD Dante been to Antarctica, he might have painted a different picture of hell. Fire and brimstone, the symbols of torture, may have given way to blistering blizzards, long periods of uninterrupted blinding sunlight or netherworld darkness -- and almost complete isolation. While Dante's hell was reserved for the dead, …
TWO US oceanographers have used powerful supercomputers to perform the best-ever simulation of the world's ocean movements -- an important step towards forecasting how changes in ocean circulation will affect global climate over the next century. Albert Semtner of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and Robert Chervin of the …
THE FIFTH meeting of the members of the Global Environment Facility, held in Beijing in May, ended with the South getting some assurance on additional finance, and many conditions on how the money would be spent. Also under discussion were the governance structures of the GEF. With the "pilot" phase …
WERE IT not for the Moon, the climate on Earth would be dramatically different, say French geophysicists who have studied the effect on climate of the Earth's obliquity. The term refers to the angle through which Earth's spin axis leans away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane. The obliquity …
HUMAN activity makes Madras city 10 C hotter than its suburbs, according to researcher N Jayanthi of the Regional Meteorology Centre there. In a paper presented at the recent national symposium in New Delhi on meteorology and national development, Jayanthi says the city is also hotter by 0.50 C to …
MOTIVATED by the need for a holistic understanding of the impact of human activity on the earth's natural phenomena, scientists in the last decade have been studying the earth as an entire system, focussing their attention on large-scale physical and biotic (related to living things) interactions. The pursuit of this …
Bitter cold and acute food shortages could take a toll of an estimated 30,000 Armenian lives if attempts to open relief corridors through Turkey and Georgia fail, warned President Levon Ter-Petrossian recently. Especially at risk in the nation of 3.5 million are thousands of refugees who fled the fighting in …
SCIENTISTS from the University of Michigan in the US have discovered that stony lumps of calcium carbonate, known as otoliths, found in the ears of most fishes, can offer clues to seasonal temperatures thousands or even millions of years ago (Science, Vol 258 No 5085). The finding has given a …
Environmental space may be defined as the total quantity of natural resources that can be used on a sustainable basis, for example, the total quantity of carbon dioxide that can be released into the air by humans without damaging atmospheric processes like the global climate. To ensure equitable distribution of …
The NASA Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), flying aboard multiple satellites, is providing new insights into the climate system. Monthly averaged clear-sky and cloudy sky flux data derived from the ERBE are used to assess the impact of clouds on the Earth's radiation balance. This impact is examined in terms …
