The air quality in the national capital remained poor for the sixth consecutive day on Monday with stubble burning accounting for seven per cent of the capital's PM2.5 pollution.
Cyclone Biparjoy has left a trail of destruction in Gujarat's Kutch and Saurashtra regions as some 1,000 villages are still without power with hundreds of electric poles getting damaged, while several coastal villages were flooded due to heavy rains and incoming seawater, officials said on Friday, a day after the storm made landfall.
According to forecasting agencies, the city is set to record its best air quality for the day after Diwali since 2015 on Tuesday.
The maximum sustained wind speed is 55 knots gusting to 65 knots around system centre. Sea condition is rough to very rough, it stated.
IMD issued red alerts for Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Kottayam, Ernakulam and Idukki districts.
Two large metal objects have been found in the search for the AirAsia airliner in the JavaSea, Indonesian officials said on Saturday, even as continuing bad weather held back efforts to hunt for the plane's data recorders.
Health expert termed the problems caused due to the rise in pollution as a "medical emergency".
Rescuers on Sunday recovered another body and a fifth large object belonging to the doomed AirAsia jet in the JavaSea as they continued to scour the choppy waters for the eighth day.
Climate change has hampered the ability of the forecasting agencies to accurately predict severe events and weather bureaus across the world are focusing on augmenting the observational network density and the weather prediction modelling to improve predictability, India Meteorological Department (IMD) Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra has said.
The overall Air Quality Index (AQI) of Delhi stood at 398 at 11 am, worsening from 357 at 4 pm on Friday. It was 354 on Thursday, 271 on Wednesday, 302 on Tuesday and 312 on Monday (Diwali).
India Meteorological Department has issued an orange alert for Mumbai, warning of very heavy rains at isolated places with strong winds on Monday as cyclone Tauktae is likely to pass close to the Mumbai coast.
The mercury breached the 46-degree Celsius mark in several places such as Allahabad (46.8 degrees Celsius) and Jhansi (46.2 degrees Celsius) in Uttar Pradesh; Sports Complex (46.4 degrees Celsius) in Delhi; Ganganagar (46.4 degrees Celsius) in Rajasthan; Nowgong (46.2 degrees Celsius) in Madhya Pradesh; and Maharashtra's Chandrapur (46.4 degrees Celsius).
According to an IMD forecast issued on Thursday, a heatwave spell will persist over northwest and central India during the next five days and over east India during the next three days.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday reviewed the preparedness to deal with the situation arising out of the likely formation of Cyclone Jawad that is expected to hit the North Andhra Pradesh-Odisha coast and directed officials to take every possible measure to ensure that people are safely evacuated.
While the experience of summers has been uncomfortable, the actual readings on thermometers may cause wonder about the exaggerated discomfort. This is what meteorologists call 'real feel temperature' or 'real feel heat'. Sanjeeb Mukherjee explains.
The maximum temperature at the Safdarjung Observatory, Delhi's base station, is likely to rise to 45 degrees Celsius.
The warmest six years have all been since 2015, with 2016, 2019 and 2020 being the top three. The differences in average global temperatures among the three warmest years are indistinguishably small. The average global temperature in 2020 was about 14.9C, 1.2 ( 0.1) C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level.
India Ratings and Research on Friday revised down India's FY22 real GDP growth forecast to 10.1 per cent, from earlier projection of 10.4 per cent, citing the second wave of COVID-19 infections and slower pace of vaccination. At a time when large parts of the country are experiencing tremendous pressure on medical infrastructure, the agency said it expects the second wave to start subsiding by mid-May. Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank maintained its 10.5 per cent GDP growth estimate, but Governor Shaktikanta Das has flagged the rising cases as the biggest impediment to recovery.
Skies over Delhi hung heavy with smoke and its air quality inched towards "severe" category on Diwali night as people burst firecrackers in a blatant disregard to the government's ban against it, imposed amid an increase in the contribution from farm fires.
Aircraft debris and some personal belongings have been found at the air crash site in Tengxian County of Wuzhou City, but no survivors, state-run CGTN reported on Tuesday.
This is the third time this season, after December 8 and January 1, that visibility has dropped to zero metres in the city.
Skymet says the IMD ignored the required criterion of two days of necessary rainfall to declare a proper onset of monsoon, reports Sanjeeb Mukherjee.
According to Central Pollution Control Board's (CPCB) Sameer app, the city's air quality index (AQI) stood at 449 in the severe category at 8 am on Saturday. It was 462 on Friday.
The sweltering heat killed 57 people across Japan in the week from July 29 to Aug. 4, the Disaster Management Agency said on Tuesday.
A day after heavy showers battered Mumbai, the rain intensity reduced briefly on Monday morning and picked up momentum again, leading to water-logging at some places and disrupting local train services, officials said.
The six-wheeled solar-powered rover named Zhurong, resembling a blue butterfly and with a mass of 240 kg, slowly trundled off a ramp on the lander to hit the red, sandy soil of Mars, starting its journey to explore the fourth planet from the Sun.
The 6.5 magnitude quake on Thursday in the same region of Kumamoto brought down buildings, killing nine people and injuring about 800.
The Indian Meteorological Department on Sunday stood vindicated over its forecast that Phailin will not be a 'super cyclone' as predicted by some international agencies and said its assessment was "more or less" accurate.
Modi called for timely evacuation of those involved in off-shore activities.
The three-day meeting between the two commissioners of PCIW completed discussions on all agenda items on Wednesday.
Modi called for ensuring maintenance of all essential services such as power, telecommunications, health and drinking and their immediate restoration in the event of damages caused to them.
The crucial black box of the doomed AirAsia jet was on Sunday found in the Java Sea stuck under the debris from the plane's fuselage and will be retrieved on Monday as the major breakthrough in the search raised hopes of unravelling the mystery of the crash soon.
Scores of people die every year due to cold waves that sweep across the north Indian plains.
The national capital on Friday recorded a 24-hour average air quality index of 239. On Thursday, it was 315, the worst since February 12 when the AQI was 320.
According to a report prepared by the NGO, 106 people have died due to cold in Delhi between January 1 and January 19.
The powerful cyclone, strongest to hit India in 20 years, made landfall at around 8 am in India's eastern state of Odisha, killing at least 12 people.
The city also witnessed cold wave conditions, as the minimum temperature was less than 10 degrees Celsius and five notches below normal, according to Mahesh Palawat, an expert at Skymet Weather, a private forecasting agency.
Surface temperatures have increased rapidly during the past century, leading to an increase in the frequency and intensity of tropical storms in the Arabian Sea, reports Sanjeeb Mukherjee.
The prime minister also asserted that in view of the COVID-19 situation, the states must ensure that people follow all health precautions such as wearing of face masks, hand sanitisation and maintaining an adequate physical distance with each other while undertaking rescue efforts.
Monsoon is likely to reach Maharashtra and Goa in the next two days, the India Meteorological Department said on Monday, with a private weather forecasting agency predicting sustained heavy rains later this week.
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