A total of 435 people died in the country due to extreme weather events during the last three months of the southwest monsoon, according to the data compiled by the India meteorological department.
Glaciers in the Karakoram region are in a stable condition, but those feeding the Ganga and the Brahmaputra river basins are melting at a faster rate, the earth sciences ministry has said.
From the numerous small and big shops in the main markets to the residential properties, vehicles, and billboards, posters with the slogan 'NTPC go back' have come up around the town in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district over the past few days.
Officials at the India Meteorological Department said winds gusting up to 20 kmph on Sunday and 25 kmph on Monday led to a marked improvement in the air quality and improved visibility.
IMD has decided to increasingly use cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in forecasting, both to avoid such glitches and to counter the disruption of normal seasonal patterns as a result of climate change. It has formed various internal sub-groups of senior officials and meteorologists to decide on how best to use AI and ML in predicting cyclone intensity, and in making short-range weather forecasts (those valid for up to three hours) as well as long-range forecasts.
A study shows that the country has experienced 706 heatwave incidents from 1971-2019.
The increase in stubble burning has kicked off a political slugfest, with Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav on Wednesday saying that there had been a 19 per cent rise in farm fires over 2021 in Punjab and that the Aam Aadmi Party had turned the national capital into a gas chamber.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday that the partnership between India and Germany could serve as an example of success in a complex world as the two sides inked several agreements focused on sustainable development under which India would receive USD 10.5 billion assistance by 2030 to boost the use of clean energy.
A quake of magnitude 3.4 hit Delhi on Sunday, a third in less than a month.
There is a need to mainstream green finance and devise ways for incorporating environment impact into commercial lending decisions, RBI Deputy Governor M Rajeshwar Rao has said. Addressing climate risk in the financial sector should be the joint responsibility of stakeholders as it would affect the resilience of the financial system in the long run, he said. Rao made these comments while speaking at the CAFRAL Virtual Conference on Green and Sustainable Finance, recently.
'The problem is that all this reconstruction work is being monitored by the prime minister himself with inputs being provided directly by the PMO so nobody in the state government dare contradict them even if their suggestions are totally contrary to what the ecology of this region requires.'
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.
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 air quality in the capital has remained very poor or severe on most of the days in November so far.
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).
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.
Annapurna Devi, Subhas Sarkar and Rajkumar Ranjan Singh will be the new ministers of state for education.
He alleged that the BJP made people burst firecrackers on Diwali.
Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi was today given additional charge of ministries of science and technology, earth sciences and micro, small and medium enterprises following ill health of Vilasrao Deshmukh.
With rainfall and monsoons becoming highly unpredictable partly due to climate change and partly due to usual changes in weather patterns, it is such innovations by IMD which will help in planning better, reports Sanjeeb Mukherjee.
The minimum temperature in the capital dropped to 9.6 degrees Celsius, three notches below normal and the lowest this season so far. The maximum is likely to settle around 27 degrees Celsius, the India Meteorological Department said.
The global body added that national meteorological and hydrological departments in both countries are working closely with health and disaster management agencies to roll out heat health action plans.
A recent study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar has established the presence of coronavirus in water samples from the Sabarmati river and two lakes in Ahmedabad city of Gujarat.
The quake, with its epicentre near Wazirpur in northeast Delhi, occurred at 1.26 pm at a shallow depth of 5 km, said JL Gautam, Head (Operations) at NCS, an institute under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
Cyclone Vayu was to hit the Gujarat coast on Thursday, but it changed course on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday.
According to the Central Pollution Control Board's mobile application SAMEER, the city recorded an air quality index of 168, which falls in the 'moderate' category, much better than Monday's AQI of 221, which falls in the 'poor' category.
The Delhi government has banned construction and demolition activities in the city till November 21.
A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried out the first revamping of his ministry since he assumed power in May, the new ministers took charge of their portfolios on Monday.
The tsunami warning centre, which has taken shape at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services in Hyderabad, will issue alerts for the killer waves within 30 minutes of an earthquake. The centre will generate and give timely advisories to the Ministry of Home Affairs for dissemination to the public for which a satellite-based virtual private network for disaster management support has been established.
The experts said that climate change is not only raising temperatures and making India's heatwaves hotter, but also changing weather patterns that further drive dangerous weather extremes.
Fifteen Cabinet ministers and 28 Ministers of State were sworn-in by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Wednesday evening.
India received 41 per cent more rainfall than normal from October 1-21 with Uttarakhand alone recording more than five times its normal precipitation, IMD data showed on Thursday.
The central government's Air Quality Early Warning System for Delhi said a "significant improvement in air quality is not likely" owing to slow wind speed, particularly during night time, and contribution from farm fires.
Experts said while meteorological conditions were "moderately" favourable for dispersion of pollutants, a "very high" number of farm fires in Punjab was the primary reason for "severe" air quality.
More than 6 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been sent to 76 nations, while 4.5 crore doses have been administered to beneficiaries in the country till now, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said.
There was no immediate report of any damage or casualty.
Over 1.4 lakh jobs are estimated to be created between March 2019 and March 2021 in various central government departments, according to the Union Budget presented on Monday. The strength of government establishments was 32,71,113 as on March 1, 2019, which is estimated to increase to 34,14,226 by the first day of next month - an increase of 1,43,113, it said. The budget documents have given a break-up of the jobs estimated to be created in central government departments between 2019 and March 2021.
The region has seen nine quakes since Sunday. Of these, one was recorded in North Sumatra region in Indonesia while others have been recorded in and around the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
The IMD said that the impact of Vayu had led to heavy to very heavy rainfall in isolated places in Saurashtra, while the entire state received scattered rainfall on Saturday.
The entire wing where the OSD office is located is being sanitised and several staffers, including the OSD, is learnt to have been advised self-quarantine.
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