At least 242 million students in 85 countries had their schooling disrupted by extreme climate events in 2024, including heatwaves, tropical cyclones, storms, floods, and droughts, exacerbating an existing learning crisis, according to a new UNICEF analysis released today. Heatwaves were the predominant climate hazard shuttering schools last year, with …
cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh on the night of November 15, killing thousands of people and severely damaging paddy crops just before harvest, and the Sundarbans. Though the official death toll till November 20 was about 4,000, unofficial estimates say the figure could cross 10,000. The worst cyclone in terms of …
A Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a massive weather event consisting of deep convection coupled with atmospheric circulation, moving slowly eastward over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Despite its enormous influence on many weather and climate systems worldwide, it has proven very difficult to simulate an MJO because of assumptions about …
This study assesses the storm protection role afforded by mangroves. It uses data on human casualties, damages to houses and livestock losses suffered in the Kendrapada district of the State of Orissa during the super cyclone of October 1999. The analysis incorporates meteorological, geo-physical and socio-economic factors to separate out …
people living in Sipasarubali near the coast in Puri, Orissa, are under threat. Waves have swept away parts of a beach in this popular tourist spot. While local residents are perturbed and visitors are avoiding the shore, officials seem to be in denial. The district administration has put up sand …
before the Sethusamudram project began, many had cautioned the government against going ahead with the shipway. The ambitious project has claimed its casualty even before the first brick has been laid on it: specialist opinion. The government had long poured scorn over ecological objections against the proposed shipway in the …
In the third week of August, hurricane Dean battered America's mid-western and southern states, and raced through the Gulf of Mexico. Weathermen did not expect the hurricane to intensify sharply. Dean was the third most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall since record keeping began in the 1850s. A week …
After spending a lot of money on sea walls, the Kerala government is now creating an eco-fence against natural calamities like the tsunami that ravaged the state in 2004. Under the Harithatheeram Project, the government will fence the state's 590-km coastline by planting mangroves, casuarinas, thespesias, pandanus and other species …
cyclone Gonu has showed up the chinks in India's wind pattern research. The cyclone lashed Oman on June 4, 2007, and delayed monsoon in India by a week. Indian scientists, including the India Meteorological Department (imd), failed to predict the wind disturbance on the Persian Gulf and its effect on …
The two most important hydrological extremes are floods and droughts. These events pose serious hazards to human populations in many parts of the world. These water related disasters are caused because of large diversity in climate and topography of the country. Climate change in future is expected to have severe …
>> In the latest plan to stem the flow of the mud volcano that erupted last year in East Java, Indonesia, a US $69 million-proposal has been chalked out. A concrete dam will be built to check the mud flow, which has already displaced around 15,000 people (see
No proper assessment of damage by port The deep-water Pondicherry Port is slated to be constructed in four phases over eight years. The eia report has proposed a roadmap. Phase 1 will involve the construction of the deep-water port, a breakwater and container berths with a capacity of 540,000 teu …
India's Tsunami Early-Warning System in the Indian Ocean is close to completion, but authorities are clueless about how to circulate alerts. An interim system has been in place since July 2005 and the new information network got commissioned in October 2005. The National Disaster Management (ndm), which looks after the …
It has been asserted that psychological responses to disasters in children and adolescents vary widely across cultures, but this has rarely been investigated. The objectives of the study were to clinically evaluate the construct of traumatic stress symptoms and disorder in children and adolescents after a super-cyclone in Orissa, India; …
The study aims at evaluating the degree of success in relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction activities undertaken after the supercyclone and ascertain the achievements and the progress from the perceptions of the affected people.
weather forecasters will now need to track atmospheric dust to predict hurricanes. Dust may dampen hurricane fury, say scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studying a link between Atlantic hurricanes and thick clouds of dust that periodically rise from the Sahara Desert and blow off Africa's western coast. A strong …
the Indian Meteorological Department may soon be credited for predicting the path of tropical cyclones and nor'westers with remarkable accuracy. A new weather forecast model, which tracked Mala, the April 26 cyclone from the Bay of Bengal with significant accuracy, will soon be adopted by weather research and forecasting organisations …
India witnesses hotter summers, shorter winters. Shape of things to come? Carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere is held as one of the primary reasons for glaciers melting but it could also be wreaking havoc with the climate. The projected rate of warming is much higher than the observed changes …
• South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who is standing trial on charges of fraud and embezzlement for his team's research on stem cells, has resumed work on animal cloning. He has opened a biological research facility in southern Seoul and is working with about 30 of his former lab associates. …
More than 40,000 people were evacuated as typhoon Prapiroon hit southern China on August 3, pounding an already battered area with more heavy rains and winds. Till reports last received, at least six people have been killed. Prapiroon made landfall along a stretch of coastal Guangdong province, including the cities …
