General Awareness

ENVIRONMENT - December 2018

Dec 2018

Aug 17, 2021

Indian Scientists Discover 'Mermaid' Plant Species

Indian scientists have discovered a new plant species in India's Andamans archipelago.
Biologists found a marine green algae during a trip to the island in 2019.
Identification is laborious, and it took the scientists nearly two years to confirm that the species had been discovered for the first time.
Scientists say this is the first discovery of a species of algae in the islands in nearly four decades.
Scientists from the Central University of Punjab have named the specie Acetabularia jalakanyakae.
Jalakanyaka in Sanskrit literally means mermaid and a goddess of oceans. The scientists say they were influenced by the fictional character Little Mermaid in the eponymous fairy tale by Danish writer Hans Christian Anderson.
The newly discovered species is so stunning. It has caps with intricate designs as if it were umbrellas of a mermaid.
The main feature of the newly discovered species is that the plant is made up of just one gigantic cell with just one nucleus - botanically, the condition is called "coenocytic".

Two New Species of Sauropod Dinosaurs Unearthed in China

Paleontologists have identified two new species of giant herbivorous dinosaurs from fossils found in the Turpan-Hami Basin, Xinjiang, northwestern China.
The two new dinosaurs lived in what is now China during the Early Cretaceous epoch, between 130 and 120 million years ago.
Dubbed 'Silutitan sinensis' and 'Hamititan xinjiangensis', they were about 20 m and 17 m long, respectively.
Both species belong to Somphospondyli, a large clade of titanosauriform sauropods that lived from the Late Jurassic until the end of the Late Cretaceous.

Aug 16, 2021

Four more Indian Wetlands Added to Ramsar List

Four more wetlands from India have been added to the Ramsar list and have been recognised as wetlands of global importance in accordance with the Ramsar Convention.
India is home to more than a dozen of threatened and near threatened bird species.
Four sites that have been included are Thol from Gujarat, Wadhwana from Gujarat, Sultanpur from Haryana and Bhindawas from Haryana.
These sites are home to endangered Egyptian Vulture, Sociable Lapwing, Saker Falcon, and near threatened Dalmatian Pelican.
With the latest addition, the number of Ramsar sites in India has reached to 46.

July 2021 is Officially the Hottest Month Ever

Global warming and climate change can't be ignored any longer. July 2021 has earned a dubious distinction - of being the hottest month EVER, in recorded history of the world. Reseachers further point out that it is quite likely that 2021 will rank among the 10 warmest years on record. According to new global data released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), extreme heat is also a reflection of the long-term changes outlined in a major report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.93 of a degree Celsius) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees F (15.8 degrees Celsius), making it the hottest July since records began 142 years ago.

Ghaziabad is World's Second most Polluted City of 2020

Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad was adjudged the second most polluted city out of the 50 'most polluted cities' in the world in 2020 by a report prepared by British company HouseFresh. Ghaziabad reported an average Air Quality Index (AQI) of 2.5 particulate matter (PM) in 106.6µg/m3.
Preceding Ghaziabad, Chinese city of Hotan in Xinjiang province has been named the most polluted city with a PM2.5 of 110.2µg/m3. The report attributed the air pollution in Hotan to sandstorms resulting from its closeness to the Taklimakan Desert, which is the largest shifting sand desert in the world.
Manikganj in Bangladesh stood third in the list of 'most polluted cities' in the world with a PM2.5 of 80.2µg/m3.

Aug 15, 2021

Highest Recorded Temperature in European History Reported in Italy

Italy may have just recorded the hottest temperature in European history, according to preliminary reports from local meteorologists. And perhaps fittingly, the culprit of the heat wave has been named Lucifer.
Syracuse, a city on the coast of the Italian island of Sicily, registered temperatures of 119.85 degrees Fahrenheit (48.8 degrees Celsius) (Aug. 11). If the measurement is confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, it will break the previous European record of 118.4 F (48 C) recorded in Athens in 1977.
The measurement comes amid a scorching heat wave that has baked the Medditeranean for more than a week, feeding devastating wildfires that have destroyed homes and claimed lives in Italy, Greece, Algeria and Turkey.

Aug 13, 2021

China's Plan to Become Carbon-neutral by 2060

China's industrialization has occurred at a breathtaking pace, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and transforming the country into the world's factory floor. That's also made it the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change. The most-populous nation has set itself the ambitious goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2060, a challenging target given it hasn't even reached its emissions peak. To get there, President Xi Jinping wants to transition away from an economy reliant on coal and other fossil fuels by switching to renewable energy and developing new technology to capture emissions.

Aug 10, 2021

Indian Ocean Warming at Faster Pace

According to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Indian Ocean is warming at a higher rate than other oceans, with scientists warning that India will witness increased heat waves and flooding, which will be the irreversible effects of climate change.
The authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), "Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis", said the warming of the ocean will lead to a rise in sea levels, which will contribute to more frequent and severe coastal flooding in low-level areas.

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