'Temperature and wind can be predicted more easily than rainfall.' 'Rainfall, as common experience suggests, is very spotty.' 'The last bit of physics required that tells us whether it is going to rain or not is very hard.' Professor Roddam Narasimha, the eminent scientist, explains the monsoon, climate change and global warming, in a fascinating conversation with Shivanand Kanavi.
India will receive normal monsoon this season, country's meteorological department said on Wednesday in its forecast for the Southwest monsoon that covers 75 per cent of the country, and thereby may bring much-needed respite to the economy, which is reeling under the catastrophic effect of the Covid-19 pandemic.
'It affects our economy, it is very important in many ways.' 'So we have to be the foremost experts in the world on the monsoon.' 'But the best minds in India have not devoted their time to the study of monsoon and they have followed the fashions of the West.'
Kelly Knight Craft has been ambassador to Canada since October 2017. She previously served as an alternate delegate to the UN during the George W Bush administration.
Full list of the rejigged Union Council of Ministers
The new records for extreme lightning bursts, or 'megaflashes', during 2019, are more than double the size and duration of the previous record flashes.
Data spanning the years 1951 to 2014 show that temperature and pressure conditions at specific locations in the Arctic region during the pre-monsoon period correlate with the Indian summer monsoon rainfall, points out Charu Bahri.
The Rashtrapati Bhavan has come out with a communiqu announcing distribution of portfolios of the ministers sworn-in on Monday in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers:
United States Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to India on June 23 to co-chair the 4th India-US strategic dialogue, his spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Close on the heels of Kenya, which recently set on fire over a hundred ton of its ivory stockpile, experts in India are mulling a similar provision to destroy the "white gold" to send a strong message against poaching.
The IPCC has blamed man-made emissions for warming of the globe and long term climate change. Limiting climate change, therefore, will require substantial and sustained reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This is the message to politicians and policy makers of the world, says Dinesh C Sharma
President of Public Health Foundation of India, Professor K Srinath Reddy said it should be recognised that community transmission has occurred in virtually every country which experienced this pandemic in a major form and India should also be prepared for it and act as though it is happening and take all precautionary containment measures.
Shahid Jameel, recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, also said that the country had already reached community transmission a long time ago.
This is the joint statement issued by the ministry of external affairs on the visit of US President Barack Obama to India.
Mount Everest moved three centimetres during the recent devastating earthquakes in Nepal but contrary to earlier reports the height of world's tallest mountain has not been affected, Chinese official monitoring agency said.
With about 40 per cent deficit rainfall during the monsoon season in parts of the state and shrinkage in sowing area, the Andhra Pradesh government has directed the Tirumala Tirupati Devastanam to "perform Yagnas" in temples to propitiate the rain God.
Seeking to seize "transformative moment" in ties with India, US Secretary of State John Kerry will arrive in New Delhi on Wednesday for talks on key issues with the new Indian leadership.
Over 1,800 dead in just over a week! The bristling summer continues to claim lives across India as temperatures soar between mid-to high-40 degrees. And there's no respite in sight for at least the next couple of days.
'It is clear that nature is not in a mood to give us leeway to be lazy, inefficient or just do business as usual.' 'It is telling us that we have no time to get things wrong. We need to take drastic actions - now
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain DoPT, Atomic Energy as well as all important policy issues and portfolios not allocated.
Scientists have found that much of the Indus civilisation thrived around an extinct river, challenging ideas about how urbanisation in ancient cultures evolved.
Of that figure, a whopping 4,246 people died in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana alone.
The Niti Aayog has finalised the first draft of a new national energy policy.
In a rare honour, the United States has named a mountain in Antarctica after eminent Indian-American scientist Akhouri Sinha whose pioneering biological research expedition has provided vital data about animal populations.
El Nino is expected to occur in August-September, but it is unlikely to have any major impact on the monsoon, and the weatherman expects a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, which has a strong influence on rainfall in the country.
What does Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee thinks about India's education sector?
These plantations are not only eating into the land occupied by the region's native forests, they could also disturb the ground water reserve and soil quality
In the third reshuffle since coming to power, Prime Minister Modi raised the strength of his Council of Ministers from 73 to 76.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry, heading a high-powered delegation of his cabinet colleagues and top military commanders, today left for India as part of his 10-day seven nation Asia trip.
Moving ahead with their new mantra -- Chalein Saath Saath: Forward Together We Go -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United States President Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed to deepen cooperation in every sector for the benefit of global stability and people's livelihoods over the next ten years.
'I bow to the 125 crore citizens of this great nation and promise to stay true to the trust they have bestowed on me.'
'Fearlessness, courtesy, humour, wide interests and wisdom, deep commitment to science and technology, passion for the environment, objectivity and the ability to see many things through not only a national but also an international prism.'
Scientists at the India Meteorological Department warn that not only has India turned hotter in the last two decades, but that heat waves are projected to become more intense, have longer durations and greater frequency, thereby resulting in more deaths.
'Drought in the 1990s was essentially the drought of a poor India.' 'This 2016 drought is of a richer and more water-guzzling India.' 'The severity and intensity of the drought is not about lack of rainfall.' 'It is about the lack of planning and foresight, and criminal neglect.'
'If Modi arrived like a juggernaut, he left like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were being dismantled bit by bit. It was as if India had seceded quietly from him.' Shiv Viswanathan's social science fiction about what India would be like in 2020.
In Vrindavan, work is on to build the world's tallest religious structure, a new temple for Krishna by ISKCON-Bangalore
With fresh enrollments crossing 100,000 mark, the total number of Indian students studying in the US reported a sharp increase this year.
To avert another Uttarakhand-type catastrophe, we must change course. We should stop pandering to the Indian elite's insatiable appetite for electricity, which is driving reckless dam construction, says Praful Bidwai
Aziz Haniffa, who has covered every Indian Prime Minister's visit to the US since Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, gives us a peek into what's happening in Washington, DC on the eve of the Modi-Trump summit.
'We have a common way of looking at the world, a common way of thinking, and a common set of values that predispose us to be partners. And our interests overlap greatly,' Dr Ashton B Carter, America's next defence secretary, told Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com in an exclusive interview.
