Return on National Monsoon Mission 50-fold: NCAER report

A new report released by the Indian government opined that the country’s National Monsoon Mission and High Performing Computing programmes will provide a 50-fold benefit on the funds allocated to them. The report, made by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), a Delhi-based independent, non-profit, economic policy research institute, an investment of nearly Rs1,000 crore in these programmes would provide a benefit of Rs50,000 crore in monetary gains to nearly 1.07 crore citizens below poverty line (BPL) agricultural households and 53 lakh BPL fishermen households.

The mission was launched by the Ministry of Earth Sciences in 2012 with a goal to develop a state-of-the-art monsoon prediction system for weather forecasting that includes short, medium and long-range forecasting.   

Study finds brown carbon tarballs in Himalayan atmosphere 

A recent study found nearly 28% of particles that were collected from air samples around a research station in the Himalaya-Tibet Plateau were tar balls – carbonaceous particles formed as a result of biomass of fossil fuel burning that settles on snow and ice. According to the study published in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters, this percentage rose on days with higher pollution levels and could cause a rapid increase in global warming and glacial melt. The study identified the sources of pollution to be a dense array of active fire spots coupled with wheat-residue burning in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. 

Forest fires in Amazon continue to emit GHGs long after burning out: Study

Forest fires continue to emit greenhouse gases long after they extinguish, according to a new study. The research, published in Environmental Research Letters, found that forest fires continue to drive up emissions levels for around two decades after burning out. The emissions don’t peak until four years after the flames have stopped because of the slow death of trees, the study stated. Emissions after the fire stops account for nearly 73% of the total emissions from a single wildfire, according to the research.  

Study warns 2°C rise could release billions of tonnes of carbon from world’s soil

An average global temperature rise of 2°C could release 230 billion tonnes of carbon from the world’s soil, according to a recent study – about four times the total emissions of China and double that of the US over the past 100 years. Soil contains about two to three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. The faster the temperature rises, the more carbon soil loses.

6,000 sqkm net global wetland loss likely by 2100: Study

A recent study projected a net global wetland loss of 6,000km2 by 2100. The study, published in the journal Nature, projected the number of sites with an area loss of more than 10% to increase by 19% –65% under low emissions, 148–243% under high emissions and ~16% with global mean warming of 2 °C relative to 1.5 °C. The research identified wetland locations in the Mediterranean, Mexico, Central America and South Africa to be the most vulnerable to shrinkage.

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