Category: Climate & Earth

According to the ratings, India stands at 23rd position with a score of 61.31 among the countries, falling 13 places from last year’s list.

India has slipped 13 places from its previous ranking to 23rd position in a latest global chart on climate change performance, brought out by a group of three organisations, mainly due to absence of any deadline to exit from coal usage.

The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2026, jointly published and released by Germanwatch, NewClimate Institute and Climate Action Network at the ongoing UN COP30 Climate Summit here on Tuesday, is an annual independent monitoring tool for climate mitigation performance of 63 countries and the European Union.

According to the ratings, India stands at 23rd position with a score of 61.31 among the countries, falling 13 places from last year’s list. It also labelled India among the biggest producers of oil, gas and coal worldwide.

The country’s show fell from a ‘high performer’ to a ‘medium’ one in this year’s CCPI as there is no national coal exit timeline and new coal blocks continue to be auctioned, it added.

The key demands for climate action have been a time-bound coal phase-down and eventually a phase-out, and redirecting fossil subsidies toward decentralised community-owned renewable energy segment, the report highlighted.

The document noted that no country reached the top three positions as “no country is doing enough to prevent dangerous climate change”.

The fourth position is held by Denmark with 80.52 points, followed by the UK with 70.8 and Morocco with 70.75. Saudi Arabia has been placed at the bottom with a score of 11.9, while Iran and the USA are at 66th and 65th positions with 14.33 and 21.84 points respectively.

“India ranks 23rd and is among the medium-performing countries in this year’s CCPI. The country earns a medium in GHG Emissions, Climate Policy, and Energy Use, and a low in Renewable Energy,” the report said.

In a contradictory statement, the document said India is signalling its long-term intent on climate action with a formal strategy and ambitious renewable energy targets, alongside established efficiency programmes such as Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) appliance labelling since 2006 and the Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) mechanism for industry since 2012.

“The country has accelerated renewable energy deployment through auctions and fiscal tools, and the CCPI country experts note record auction participation and continuously falling tariffs.

“In 2025, India reported reaching 50 per cent of installed power capacity from non-fossil sources ahead of the 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) target,” it added.

Because of this, the experts make favourable mention of the work on green finance taxonomy and a national carbon market framework.

“At the same time, the national pathway is still anchored in coal. There is no national coal exit timeline and new coal blocks continue to be auctioned. Fossil subsidies and infrastructure lock-ins persist. The country is among the 10 countries with the largest developed coal reserves, and it currently plans to increase its production,” the CCPI 2026 said.

Stating that the experts criticised the uneven and weak carbon price signals, the report said India’s total solar rooftop capacity was 20.8 GW as of September 2025 with nearly 9 GW added in the last year, making up around 17 per cent of total solar installations.

“However, the experts criticise that large grid-scale renewable projects have triggered land conflicts, displacement, and water stress, reflecting top-down, non-inclusive siting. Several reported incidents involve human rights violations and ecosystem degradation,” it added.

The document further noted that India’s updated NDC commits to 50 per cent non-fossil capacity by 2030 and a 45 per cent emissions-intensity cut compared with 2005, but the experts noted that the 2070 net-zero goal is not aligned with 1.5 degree celsius pathways.

They also highlighted the missing interim milestones for 2035 and 2040 respectively, sectoral trajectories and state-level accountability, and limited non-inclusive consultation with civil society and communities affected.

“Internationally, India defends equity with Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and leads multilateral initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance (ISA), but the experts point out that domestic fossil fuel expansion undermines credibility,” the report said.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/india-falls-13-places-in-global-climate-change-performance-index-9659878

Hurricane Melissa churned toward Cuba’s second-largest city with the force of a powerful Category 4 storm on Tuesday, hours after making landfall in neighboring Jamaica as the strongest-ever cyclone on record to hit that Caribbean island nation.
Melissa roared ashore near Jamaica’s southwestern town of New Hope, packing sustained winds of up to 185 mph (295 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, well above the minimum 157 mph (252 kph) wind speed of a Category 5 storm, the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.

In southwestern Jamaica, the parish of St. Elizabeth was left “underwater,” an official said, with more than 500,000 residents without power.
“The reports that we have had so far would include damage to hospitals, significant damage to residential property, housing and commercial property as well, and damage to our road infrastructure,” Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness said on CNN after the storm had passed.
Holness said the government had not received any confirmed storm-related fatalities, but given the strength of the hurricane and the extent of the damage, “we are expecting that there would be some loss of life.”

Melissa’s winds subsided to 145 mph (233 kph), the NHC said, as the storm drifted past the mountainous island, lashing highland communities vulnerable to landslides and flooding.
The hurricane was forecast to curve to the northeast on a trajectory toward Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second-most populous city.
“We should already be feeling its main influence this afternoon and evening,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in a message published in state newspaper Granma, calling on citizens to heed evacuation orders.
“There will be a lot of work to do. We know that this cyclone will cause significant damage.”
Cuban authorities said some 500,000 people were ordered to move to higher ground. In the Bahamas, next in Melissa’s path to the northeast, the government ordered evacuations of residents in southern portions of that archipelago.

Farther to the east, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic had faced days of torrential downpours leading to at least four deaths, authorities there said.
Local media reported at least three deaths in Jamaica during storm preparations, and a disaster coordinator suffered a stroke in the onset of the storm and was rushed to hospital. Late Tuesday, many areas remained cut off.

JAMAICA’S ‘STORM OF THE CENTURY’

No stranger to hurricanes, Jamaica had never before been known to take a direct hit from a Category 4 or 5 storm, and the government called for foreign aid even as it prepared for Melissa’s arrival.
Meteorologists at AccuWeather said Melissa ranked as the third most intense hurricane observed in the Caribbean after Wilma in 2005 and Gilbert in 1988 – the last major storm to make landfall in Jamaica.

“It’s a catastrophic situation,” the World Meteorological Organization’s tropical cyclone specialist Anne-Claire Fontan told a press briefing, warning of storm surges up to 4 meters high. “For Jamaica, it will be the storm of the century for sure.”
Colin Bogle, an adviser to aid group Mercy Corps in Portmore, near Jamaica’s capital of Kingston, said he had heard a loud explosion in the morning before everything went dark. Sheltering with his grandmother, he heard relentless noise and saw trees violently tossed in the wind.
“People are scared. Memories of Hurricane Gilbert run deep, and there is frustration that Jamaica continues to face the worst consequences of a climate crisis we did not cause,” he said.
Scientists warn that storms are intensifying faster with greater frequency as a result of warming ocean waters. Many Caribbean leaders have called on wealthy, heavy-polluting nations to provide reparations in the form of aid or debt relief to tropical island countries.
Melissa’s size and strength ballooned as it churned over unusually tepid Caribbean waters, but forecasters warned that its slow movement could prove particularly destructive.
Food aid will be critical, Bogle said, as well as tools, vehicle parts and seeds for farmers. Like last year’s devastating Hurricane Beryl, Melissa crossed over some of Jamaica’s most productive agricultural zones.
On Monday, Holness said the government had an emergency budget of $33 million and insurance and credit provisions for damage a little greater than Beryl.

‘LIKE A ROARING LION’

Melissa made landfall in southwestern Jamaica, near the parish border between Westmoreland and St. Elizabeth, one of the areas hardest-hit by Beryl.
St. Elizabeth was submerged by flooding, local government minister Desmond McKenzie told a press briefing. Its only public hospital lost power and reported severe damage to one of its buildings.
Several families were known to have been stranded in their homes, but rescue teams managed to reach one group that included four babies, McKenzie said.
In Portland Cottage, some 150 km (94 miles) away from where Melissa made landfall, Collin Henry McDonald, 64, a retiree, told Reuters as the storm advanced that his community was seeing strong rain and winds, but his concrete roof was holding steady.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/wmo-says-hurricane-melissa-will-be-jamaicas-worst-storm-this-century-2025-10-28/

Brazilian soy farmers are pushing further into the Amazon rainforest to plant more of their crops, putting pressure on a landmark deal signed two decades ago aimed at slowing deforestation.
Many are taking advantage of a loophole in the Amazon Soy Moratorium, a voluntary agreement signed by the world’s top grain traders in 2006 that they would not buy soy grown on land deforested after 2008.

The Moratorium, protects old-growth rainforest that has never before been cleared, but excludes many other kinds of vegetation and forests that have regrown on previously cleared land, known as secondary forests.

While this land is also important for preserving the fragile Amazon biome, farmers can raze it and plant soy without violating the terms of the Moratorium and could even market it as deforestation-free.
The most recent official annual report on the Moratorium, which covers the crop year 2022-2023, showed that soy planted on virgin forest has almost tripled between 2018 and 2023 to reach 250,000 hectares, or 3.4% of all soy in the Amazon.
Its study area is limited to municipalities that grow over 5,000 hectares of soy.
However, Xiaopeng Song, a professor at the geographical sciences department of the University of Maryland who has tracked the expansion of soy over the past two decades, found more than four times that forest loss.

Satellite data he analyzed exclusively for Reuters shows 16% of Brazilian Amazon land under production for soy, or about 1.04 million hectares, is planted where trees have been cleared since 2008, the cutoff date agreed in the Moratorium.
“I would like to see secondary forest and recovered forest included in the Moratorium,” said Song. “It creates loopholes if we only limit it to primary forest.”
Abiove, the soy industry body overseeing the Moratorium, said in a statement that the agreement aims to rein in deforestation of old-growth forests while other methodologies have broader criteria that could lead to “inflated interpretations.”
Reuters was unable to make a detailed comparison because Abiove declined to share granular data.
Data in the Moratorium report comes from Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research, and its assessments are recognized internationally and monitored independently.

Abiove said it was aware that some soy was planted in areas where regrown forests had been cut.
The discrepancy over how to define a forest has huge implications for conservation.
Deforestation, drought and heat driven by climate change bring the rainforest closer to a tipping pointbeyond which it starts an irreversible transformation into a savannah.
Most scientists are calling not only for a halt to all deforestation but also for increased efforts to reforest.
Viola Heinrich, a post-doctoral researcher at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, who has extensively studied secondary forests in the Amazon, said these were “crucial” in limiting global warming even if initially less biodiverse.
“We cannot achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement without actively increasing the carbon sink,” she said, referring to regenerating ecosystems that rapidly absorb and store carbon.
Secondary forests absorb carbon at a faster rate than old-growth forests, but store less of it.

‘STOLEN AGAIN’

On a scorching afternoon late last year, on the outskirts of Santarem, a port city by the Amazon River, farmers were in the last stages of clearing land. Felled trees were neatly stacked up in rows, ready to be burnt.
Some of these trees were around three decades old, part of a secondary forest on land that was once razed to make way for cattle but later abandoned, satellite images showed.
“What can be stolen once, can be stolen again,” said Gilson Rego, of the Pastoral Land Commission, a church-affiliated group working with locals affected by deforestation, as he pointed to surrounding areas where soy had been planted.
In the last five years, Rego saw the area dedicated to the crop soar.

More than a dozen soy and subsistence farmers who spoke to Reuters said the main draw was the nearby Cargill terminal from where soy is shipped worldwide because it reduces costs for logistics. Cargill did not respond to requests for comment.
The boom helped Brazil overtake the United States in 2020 as the world’s largest soy exporter.
About two thirds of it ships to China, whose largest buyer, Cofco, has signed up to the Moratorium and said earlier this year that it was committed to it. Nearly all of it is used to fatten animals for meat production.
Still, Song estimated an additional 6 million hectares of the rainforest would have been lost to soy in Brazil without the Moratorium and related conservation efforts, considering the pace of expansion elsewhere. Neighboring Bolivia, he said, had become a deforestation hot spot.
Brazilian farmers have always opposed the Moratorium and complained that even a small amount of deforestation can lead traders to block purchases from entire farms, a policy that Abiove is considering changing.
Thousands of properties that cover some 10% of soy’s footprint in the region are currently blocked.
Adelino Avelino Noimann, the vice president of the soy farmers association in Para state, where Santarem is located, said the soy boom was creating opportunities in a poor country.
“It’s not fair that other countries in Europe could deforest and grow, and now we are held back by laws that are not even ours,” said Noimann.

LEGAL ATTACKS

Farming groups allied with right-wing politicians, once a fringe movement, have launched lawsuits and legislative attacks on the Moratorium in the capital Brasilia, and half a dozen major agricultural states, seeking to weaken its provisions.
At the end of April, a justice from Brazil’s Supreme Court said it would allow the country’s biggest farming state, Mato Grosso, to withdraw tax incentives from signatories of the Moratorium.
The ruling still needs to be confirmed by the full court.
Andre Nassar, the president of Abiove, the soy industry body that oversees the Moratorium, has already hinted that it could weaken rules to appease farmers.
“The solution is not ending the Moratorium or keeping it as it is,” Nassar told senators in April. “Something needs to be done.”
Global traders including ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Cofco and Louis Dreyfus Company had all signed up back in 2006.
Abiove and the grain traders it represents have declined to publicly discuss details but environmental group Greenpeace, which is part of some discussions, said last year that behind closed doors there was a push from traders to weaken it.
Environmentalists like Andre Guimaraes, an executive director at IPAM, another nonprofit that monitors the agreement, said that even with its faults it was important.
“We still see the expansion of soy in the Amazon,” he said. “But it could be worse.” Other environmentalists said it should be reinforced by closing loopholes.
Abundant water and nutrient-rich soil are the main reasons farmers from other parts of the country, including the soy heartland Mato Grosso, have moved to Para.
“Here, we can have as many as three harvests,” said Edno Valmor Cortezia, the president of the local farmers union, adding that farmers there can grow soy, corn and wheat on the same plot in a single year.
In the municipality Belterra near Santarem, soy expansion stopped short only at a local cemetery and school.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/corporate-deal-that-protected-amazon-soy-farming-starts-show-cracks-2025-06-20/

Earth’s oceans are losing light, and it’s happening so fast that scientists are calling it one of the planet’s largest unnoticed habitat collapses. Over the past 20 years, an area of underwater real estate larger than the entire continent of Africa has significantly darkened, squeezing 90% of marine life into an ever-shrinking zone near the surface.

A new study published in Global Change Biology reveals that our planet’s oceans have been getting progressively darker over the past two decades, with light penetration dropping so dramatically that marine habitats have shrunk greatly. This isn’t just happening in murky coastal waters where you’d expect pollution and runoff to cloud things up; it’s occurring across vast stretches of the open ocean, from polar regions to the middle of the Pacific.

Marine life depends on light for everything from photosynthesis to navigation, mating, and avoiding predators. When that light disappears, entire underwater communities get squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces near the surface.

According to the researchers, this global darkening represents a widespread reduction in the depth where sunlight and moonlight can drive essential biological processes in marine ecosystems. They describe it as a form of habitat loss that has remained largely unmeasured until now.

Using satellite data spanning from 2003 to 2022, scientists from the University of Plymouth and Plymouth Marine Laboratory analyzed how much light penetrates ocean waters worldwide. They found that across more than 29 million square miles of ocean, about 21% of the global total, waters have become significantly darker.

Researchers used data from NASA’s MODIS Aqua satellite to track something called the “diffuse attenuation coefficient,” a measure of how quickly light fades as it travels deeper underwater. They focused on blue-green light at 490 nanometers, which is crucial for marine life and penetrates seawater better than other wavelengths.

Scientists analyzed nearly 10 million data points across the globe’s oceans, using a 9-kilometer resolution grid system. Instead of just looking at surface conditions, they calculated how deep biologically important light could reach; what scientists call the “photic zone.”

Rather than relying on arbitrary measurements, they based their calculations on the light sensitivity of Calanus copepods, tiny marine creatures that migrate up and down in the water column daily in response to changing light levels. These copepods are extremely sensitive to light, making them excellent biological indicators of where the underwater “lights out” zone begins.

Massive Habitat Loss in Numbers

In areas with the most dramatic darkening, the sunlit upper layer where most marine life thrives has shrunk by more than 160 feet. Across 12.5 million square miles of ocean, this vital habitat has contracted by at least 16 feet.

To put this in perspective, the researchers note that the total area of ocean experiencing significant habitat loss exceeds the amount of forest lost globally since the year 2000. While deforestation grabs headlines, this underwater habitat loss has been happening largely unnoticed.

Even moonlight-dependent marine activities are being affected, though to a lesser degree. Many sea creatures rely on lunar cycles for reproduction and migration patterns. Scientists found that nighttime photic zones have also shrunk, with about 800,000 square miles of ocean seeing reductions of more than 16 feet in moonlight penetration.

Why Oceans Are Getting Darker

Several factors appear to be driving this global darkening trend. Near coastlines, the usual suspects include nutrient runoff from agriculture, sediment from development, and organic matter that clouds the water. But the fact that darkening is occurring far from shore suggests larger forces are at work.

Climate change may be triggering massive shifts in ocean circulation patterns, stirring up nutrients and organic matter from deeper waters. Warming surface temperatures could also be boosting plankton growth, creating a kind of natural light filter. While plankton blooms might sound beneficial, too much of a good thing can block light from reaching the creatures below.

Researchers found darkening was particularly severe in polar regions, the North Atlantic, and the North Pacific—areas where climate change is already reshaping marine ecosystems in dramatic ways. Scientists believe that increased productivity from nutrients and organic materials near coasts, combined with changes in global ocean circulation, are likely reducing how far light can penetrate into surface waters.

Researchers point out that 90% of marine life lives in the photic zone. When this critical habitat shrinks, creatures get compressed into an increasingly crowded space near the surface, leading to more competition for food and higher predation risk.

The daily vertical migration of zooplankton is what the researchers describe as the largest daily migration of biomass on the planet. These tiny animals rise to surface waters at night to feed, then dive deep during the day to avoid predators. As waters darken, their safe spaces shrink, potentially disrupting this ocean rhythm.

Coral reefs, already under siege from warming and acidifying oceans, face another threat as reduced light penetration hampers the photosynthetic algae they depend on for survival. Fish that rely on visual cues for hunting, communication, and navigation may also struggle to adapt to dimmer conditions.

Ripple effects could extend to global fisheries and carbon storage. Phytoplankton near the ocean surface play a crucial role in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If changing light conditions disrupt these microscopic organisms, it could affect the ocean’s ability to moderate climate change.

Beyond basic survival needs, many marine organisms have evolved sophisticated behaviors that depend on precise light conditions. Synchronized spawning events in corals, navigation systems in fish, and predator-avoidance strategies in countless species all rely on the predictable patterns of light and darkness that have characterized ocean environments for millions of years.

Twenty years of data, while substantial, may not be enough to rule out natural long-term cycles in ocean conditions. Researchers acknowledge that some of the darkening trends could reflect natural variability rather than permanent changes.

Studies also assume uniform water conditions from surface to seafloor, while real oceans have complex layering and mixing patterns that could affect how light penetrates. Additionally, the measurements focus on one wavelength of light, though marine organisms respond to a full spectrum of colors.

Why We Should Pay More Attention to Ocean Health

We’ve been focused on visible signs of climate change like melting glaciers and extreme weather, but this study reveals that changes are happening beneath the waves, too. When you consider that the ocean produces more than half the oxygen we breathe and absorbs a quarter of our carbon emissions, this is also important for our own survival.

Scientists warn that without sufficient light for basic life processes, marine organisms will be forced to crowd into an increasingly narrow belt of well-lit surface waters. This creates intense competition for resources and exposes more creatures to predation.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/underwater-traffic-jam-oceans-grow-darker/

The UK government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency – known as Aria – recently announced it is funding 21 research teams to explore what it terms climate cooling. The money involved (£56 million) isn’t much in the grand scheme of things. But experts on both sides of the debate (and this issue divides climate academics more than almost any other) agree it’s likely to be a precursor to more significant investment in future.

To refresh, “geoengineering” refers to any large-scale moves to deliberately alter the climate to combat global warming. This could involve removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, perhaps with huge vacuum-like machines (that still don’t really exist) or, more prosaically, by growing more trees. Some experts would consider planting a forest or restoring a wetland as a form of geoengineering.

But today we’re focusing on the other main category of geoengineering, known as “solar radiation management,” or SRM. The idea here is to ensure that more sunlight is reflected back into space before it can heat up the planet.

What makes the new UK investment so important, says Robert Chris, is it’s the first time a state has put significant public money into researching solar radiation management. Chris, who researches geoengineering at The Open University, highlighted five projects (of the 21 total) which are likely to involve small-scale experiments:

“Three … concern brightening clouds over the ocean, one explores a method of refreezing the Arctic and the fifth looks at a specific detail of the potential cooling effect of placing certain compounds in the stratosphere.”

Marine Brightening

Let’s start with the brighter clouds.

“We’re using water cannons to spray seawater into the sky. This causes brighter, whiter clouds to form. These low marine clouds reflect sunlight away from the ocean’s surface.”

That’s Daniel Harrison of Southern Cross University in Australia, writing in late 2023 about his research. He’s now been awarded UK government money to continue his work, looking specifically at whether brightening clouds directly over the Great Barrier Reef for a few months could reduce coral bleaching during a marine heat wave.

“Modeling studies are encouraging and suggest it could delay the expected decline in coral cover. This could buy valuable time for the reef while the world transitions away from fossil fuels.”

The UK funding will enable Harrison to extend his work and assess if it can be safe and effective, albeit only as a temporary measure specifically targeted at the Great Barrier Reef.

The other two cloud brightening projects, run from the universities of Manchester and Nottingham, are looking at developing better ways to seed clouds in the first place.

Arctic Refreezing

The Arctic refreezing project is run by Shaun Fitzgerald of the University of Cambridge, and focuses on sea ice. The idea is to pump sea water from below the ice onto its surface in the winter, where it freezes. This means there will be more ice accumulated ahead of the summer melting season, meaning more of the sun’s energy reflected back into space (ice is more reflective than open ocean).

Fitzgerald recently returned from fieldwork in northern Canada and wrote about his work for The Conversation. “Crucially,” he said, “the research is focused on developing our understanding of these potential ideas. The research could show that they are impractical, unfeasible or would potentially make things worse.” For instance, he points out that thicker ice “may not be much use” if it is so much saltier that it melts more quickly. He describes initial results – before the government funding – as “inconclusive but encouraging.”

Blocking Out The Sun

The final project Chris highlights looks at one aspect of proposals to inject tiny particles high in the atmosphere where they would help reflect sunlight back into space. This is probably the most likely to happen, eventually, as it’s relatively cheap and well-studied.

One risk concerns the health and environmental impact of these particles as they fall back to the surface. Hugh Hunt, also from Cambridge, has been awarded funds to examine alternative compounds that may be less toxic than those usually proposed.

Chris writes: “The plan is to send tiny samples into the stratosphere in specially designed gondolas attached to balloons. The gondolas will later be recovered, so that the effect of the stratosphere on the samples can be examined. Nothing will be released into the atmosphere.”

Researchers in this field are generally quick to point out the risks involved. Chris cautions that: “Deliberately altering the atmosphere, a shared global resource, is fraught with ethical, geopolitical and practical problems.” That’s the case whether geoengineering is carried out by states or private interests.

Is there public support, for instance? Democratic oversight? What if something goes wrong – who is to blame and who is responsible for fixing the mess? Should all countries agree on an action plan, since geoengineering will affect everyone?

These are concerns shared by Cambridge’s Albert Van Wijngaarden, UCL’s Chloe Colomer and Adrian Hindes of Australia National University. Writing last year on the risk of critical voices being excluded from geoengineering research, they worry that if “geoengineering is essentially allowed to self-regulate, with no effective global governance, future research could easily take us down a dangerous path.”

They outline an “unproductive” polarization between advocates and critics, and argue that “upcoming research projects must factor in the concerns of opponents, and not represent only supporters of geoengineering or those who have not been explicitly against it.”

Perhaps the UK government was indeed listening: in the recent Aria funding announcement, Van Wijngaarden and Colomer were awarded a grant to design “engagement programs” for people in the Arctic who are “among the most impacted” by climate change and geoengineering, but who are often ignored “because of ongoing and historical power imbalances.”

People such as Fitzgerald (the Arctic ice freezer) do tend to recognize these issues. Fitzgerald, together with his colleague Elil Hoole, says that plans to dim the sun must be led by those most affected by climate change.

Robert Chris calls solar geoengineering a “crazy idea.” But he says the alternative – not doing it – may be worse. “Perhaps solar geoengineering is the price we must pay for our wholly inadequate climate change response to date.”

Source : https://studyfinds.org/uk-funds-controversial-climate-cooling-research-geoengineering/

Residents struggled on Thursday to absorb the scale of devastation caused by a huge slab of glacier that buried most of their picturesque Swiss village, in what scientists suspect is a dramatic example of climate change’s impact on the Alps.
A deluge of millions of cubic meters of ice, mud and rock crashed down a mountain on Wednesday, engulfing the village of Blatten and the few houses that remained were later flooded. Its 300 residents had already been evacuated earlier in May after part of the mountain behind the Birch Glacier began to crumble.

Rescue teams with search dogs and thermal drone scans have continued looking for a missing 64-year-old man but have found nothing. Local authorities suspended the search on Thursday afternoon, saying the debris mounds were too unstable for now and warned of further rockfalls.
With the Swiss army closely monitoring the situation, flooding worsened during the day as vast mounds of debris almost two kilometers across clogged the path of the River Lonza, causing a huge lake to form amid the wreckage and raising fears that the morass could dislodge.
Water levels have been rising by 80 centimetres an hour from the blocked river and melting glacier ice, Stephane Ganzer, head of the security division for the Valais canton, told reporters.

Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter is returning early from high-level talks in Ireland and will visit the site on Friday, her office said.
“I don’t want to talk just now. I lost everything yesterday. I hope you understand,” said one middle-aged woman from Blatten, declining to give her name as she sat alone disconsolately in front of a church in the neighbouring village of Wiler.
Nearby, the road ran along the valley before ending abruptly at the mass of mud and debris now blanketing her own village.
A thin cloud of dust hung in the air over the Kleines Nesthorn Mountain where the rockslide occurred while a helicopter buzzed overhead.
Werner Bellwald, a 65-year-old cultural studies expert, lost the wooden family house built in 1654 where he lived in Ried, a hamlet next to Blatten also wiped out by the deluge.

“You can’t tell that there was ever a settlement there,” he told Reuters. “Things happened there that no one here thought were possible.”

PROFOUND SHOCK

The worst scenario would be that a wave of debris bursts the nearby Ferden Dam, Valais canton official Ganzer said. He added that the chances of this further mudslide were currently unlikely, noting that the dam had been emptied as a precaution so it could act as a buffer zone.
Local authorities said that the buildings in Blatten which had emerged intact from the landslide are now flooded and that some residents of nearby villages had been evacuated.
The army said around 50 personnel as well as water pumps, diggers and other heavy equipment were on standby to provide relief when it was safe.
Authorities were airlifting livestock out of the area, said Jonas Jeitziner, a local official in Wiler, as a few sheep scrambled out of a container lowered from a helicopter.
Asked how he felt about the future, he said, gazing towards the plain of mud: “Right now, the shock is so profound that one can’t think about it yet.”
The catastrophe has revived concern about the impact of rising temperatures on Alpine permafrost where thawing has loosened some rock structures, creating new mountain hazards.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/army-searches-missing-man-after-glacier-debris-buries-swiss-village-2025-05-29/

NASA’s astronaut Don Pettit became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards the Earth in a spacecraft to wrap up a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station

Cake, gifts and a low-key family celebration may be how many senior citizens picture their 70th birthday.

But National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)‘s oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards the Earth in a spacecraft to wrap up a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

A Soyuz capsule carrying the American and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan on Sunday (April 20, 2025), the day of Pettit’s milestone birthday.

“Today at 4:20 Moscow time (1:20 GMT), the Soyuz MS-26 landing craft with Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald (Don) Pettit aboard landed near the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan,” Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said.

Spending 220 days in space, Pettit and his crewmates Ovchinin and Vagner orbited the Earth 3,520 times and completed a journey of 93.3 million miles over the course of their mission.

It was the fourth spaceflight for Pettit, who has logged more than 18 months in orbit throughout his 29-year career.

The trio touched down in a remote area southeast of Kazakhstan after undocking from the space station just over three hours earlier.

NASA images of the landing showed the small capsule parachuting down to Earth with the sunrise as a backdrop.

The astronauts gave thumbs-up gestures as rescuers carried them from the spacecraft to an inflatable medical tent.

Despite looking a little worse for wear as he was pulled from the vessel, Pettit was “doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth,” NASA said in a statement.

He was then set to fly to the Kazakh city of Karaganda before boarding a NASA plane to the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.

The astronauts spent their time on the ISS researching areas such as water sanitization technology, plant growth in various conditions and fire behavior in microgravity, NASA said.

The trio’s seven-month trip was just short of the nine months that NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams unexpectedly spent stuck on the orbital lab after the spacecraft they were testing suffered technical issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.

Source : https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/nasas-oldest-active-astronaut-returns-to-earth-on-70th-birthday/article69471026.ece

For nearly 90% of Earth’s history, our planet’s atmosphere contained almost no oxygen, making it completely uninhabitable for humans and most modern life forms. Then, around 2.5 billion years ago, something remarkable happened: Earth’s atmosphere began to fill with oxygen in what scientists call the Great Oxidation Event (GOE). This atmospheric revolution changed our planet’s chemistry and paved the way for complex life.

But this wasn’t a sudden change. Before the GOE, Earth’s atmosphere occasionally experienced temporary “whiffs” of oxygen—mysterious spikes that came and went. What caused these oxygen previews has puzzled scientists for years. Now, researchers from the university of Tokyo have found a surprising answer: massive volcanic eruptions.

Volcanoes: Unlikely oxygen producers

In a study published in Communications Earth & Environment, scientists showed how enormous volcanic eruptions known as Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) could have triggered these temporary oxygen events. Their computer models revealed that intense volcanic periods could have caused oxygen increases lasting several million years.

But how could volcanoes, which release carbon dioxide and other gases, lead to more oxygen? The answer involves a chain reaction through Earth’s early systems.

When these enormous eruptions occurred, they released vast amounts of carbon dioxide, warming the planet. This warming increased the breakdown of continental rocks, releasing phosphorus into the oceans. This phosphorus fed photosynthesizing microbes, which produced oxygen as a byproduct.

“Activity of microorganisms in the ocean played a central role in the evolution of atmospheric oxygen. However, we think this would not have immediately led to atmospheric oxygenation because the amount of nutrients such as phosphate in the ocean at that time was limited,” says professor Eiichi Tajika from the University of Tokyo, in a statement. “It likely took some massive geological events to seed the oceans with nutrients, including the growth of the continents and, as we suggest in our paper, intense volcanic activity.”

Ancient rocks tell the tale

These findings explain puzzling evidence found in rocks like the Mt. McRae Shale in Australia. Deposited around 2.5 billion years ago, this rock contains elevated levels of elements like molybdenum and rhenium, which point to a temporary oxygen increase. This oxygen spike would have lasted between several million to 11 million years, matching what the models predict.

The evidence for these oxygen whiffs isn’t limited to one location. The original research paper notes that the whiff event recorded in Mt. McRae Shale coincided with redox-sensitive element enrichment in the Klein Naute Formation in South Africa. This suggests these oxygen increases may have been widespread phenomena rather than isolated local events.

This makes sense based on our understanding of how Earth’s surface was evolving at this time. The late Archean period was a time of significant planetary change. Continents were growing, volcanic activity was reshaping the surface, and life was evolving new metabolic capabilities.

“Understanding the whiffs is critical for constraining the timing of the emergence of photosynthetic microorganisms,” says visiting research associate Yasuto Watanabe. “The biggest challenge was to develop a numerical model that could simulate the complex, dynamic behavior of biogeochemical cycles under late Archean conditions.”

The continental connection

In December 2024, astronomers in Chile spotted a new asteroid streaking through the sky, which they named 2024 YR4. What’s significant about this 100-meter-wide space rock is that it has a small chance of hitting Earth in 2032.

Since its discovery, the asteroid’s probability of an impact with our planet has gone all over the place. At one point, the risk rose as high as 3.1%. This may not sound like a lot, until you realize that that is a 1 in 32 chance of collision.

As of February 24, 2025, the European Space Agency’s (Esa) Near Earth Object Centre predicts the collision probability to be just 0.002%, which is a 1 in 50,000 chance – a huge difference. So why is there such a huge variability in these predictions? And is there really a need to be concerned?

Asteroids are leftover remnants from the formation of the solar system, mostly rock, but also metallic, or icy bodies that tend to live in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Space agencies like NASA and ESA independently monitor and track over 37,000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). These NEAs are those that come within 1.3 astronomical units distance of Earth, where 1 astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and Sun. Around 1,700 objects are considered to have an elevated risk because they make a relatively close approach to Earth at some point in the future. They are said to have a non-zero probability of colliding with our planet.

Now it’s estimated that 44,000 kilograms of space rock hits our planet every year, but most of it is dust or sand-grain-sized particles that will burn up in the atmosphere, creating the beautiful streaks in the sky that we know as shooting stars.

Rarely do these objects make it to the Earth intact as a meteorite and it’s even rarer to have a cataclysmic impact, like the 10km wide object that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. The last major asteroid event in recent history was the 18m-wide meteorite that hit Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013.

The fireball turned night into day and released an estimated 500 kilotons of energy (equivalent to 500,000 tonnes of TNT) as it explosively broke apart in our atmosphere. Around 1,500 people were injured – many through the sonic waves shattering windows.

Current estimates for 2024 YR4 suggest it to be up to 100m in size. It is capable of releasing about 7.8 Megatons of energy (equivalent to 7.8 million tonnes of TNT explosive), which is much more than Chelyabinsk. If such an asteroid were to hit the centre of London you could expect over 2 million fatalities. But the effects would be felt over a larger area.

The impact would have a “thermal radiation radius” of 26 km. Within this radius, the heat from the impact would be so intense it would cause third-degree burns. So despite the small probabilities, there’s no question that this asteroid should be monitored and tracked closely.

NASA has also reported a very small chance that 2024 YR4 could collide with the Moon instead. This would pose no threat to people on Earth, but would generate a sizeable impact crater on our planet’s only natural satellite.

No simple answers

Tracking an asteroid turns out to be more complex than you might think. Unlike stars and galaxies, asteroids don’t emit light so are notoriously difficult to spot. This faintness likely contributed to why 2024 YR4 4 eluded detection up until so recently.

In addition, the shape of the asteroid, and its albedo – which measures how reflective the asteroid is – is still highly uncertain, further complicating the prediction of its future path. The albedo of the asteroid not only tells us about the composition of the asteroid, but can inform us of interactions with the Sun.

A darker asteroid will absorb more light, heating up any gases within the asteroid. When released, these gases can act like jet thrusters, altering the trajectory of the asteroid. A more reflective asteroid, might incur more radiation pressure from the Sun. This pressure can actually push it in another direction to the one it was previously going in.

The current estimates of YR4’s albedo are between 0.05 – 0.25, with 0 being completely matte, and 1 being completely reflective, so the margin of uncertainty is wide. As you might expect, the shape of the asteroid will also affect the direction in which these forces act and the resulting trajectory of the object.

Current trajectory estimates assume a spherical asteroid, with a typical density for an S-type asteroid (a common type of rocky asteroid). The asteroid 2024 YR 4 has very little chance of being spherical (that shape tends to be seen in bigger objects with stronger gravity) and we don’t know what exactly it’s made from. Future observations, potentially including those from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), aim to refine our understanding of the asteroid’s shape.

However, past discrepancies between predictions of the comet 67P, as seen by the Hubble telescope from far away, versus its actual shape captured by the Rosetta spacecraft, which explored it up close, demonstrate the limitations of our predictions.

Spectral imaging (which measures different colors of light to give an indication of composition) will hopefully allow us to better understand what type of material is on the surface of the asteroid and whether there could be volatile gases hiding beneath it that could affect its future path.

Given that the projected Earth impact is a mere seven years away, the window for sending a spacecraft to try and divert it away from our planet, as successfully demonstrated by NASA’s Dart mission in 2022, is rapidly closing. While other options such as detonating a nuclear weapon near the asteroid to deflect its path remain theoretically possible, they come with significant risks and ethical considerations. For instance, instead of diverting the asteroid, a nuclear explosion could break it into two or more pieces, which could then collide with Earth in distinct locations.

Source : https://studyfinds.org/asteroid-2024-yr4-earth-collision-odds/

CHILLING new telescope photos of the “city killer” asteroid hurtling towards earth at 30,000mph have been released.

The chance of the space rock smashing into Earth when it loops around in 7 years’ time is estimated at a 1-in-48 chance – or just over two per cent.

The striking new images of asteroid YR4 2024 were captured by a space telescope in Chile on February 7, and show it in the most detail yet.

They were taken through the lens of the Gemini South Telescope – a powerful, 26-foot device in the Andes that specialises in staring deep into space.

Bryce Bolin, a NASA astronomer involved in the photo operation, told Space.com: “Only a few asteroids have been studied like this.”

The grainy images show 2024 YR4 as a bright white smudge against the night sky.

The rock was around 37 million miles from Earth when it was snapped.

Photographing a fast-moving object from such a distance is incredibly difficult, and required the team’s full expertise.

Bryce explained that they “took 12 200-second long exposures in the Red Band [the wavelength of red light] and tracked the motion of the asteroid”.

He said the task was difficult because the asteroid was relatively faint – meaning it could only be picked up using a very large telescope.

Another challenge was presented by the moon, which was 70 per cent full.

The moon’s illumination caused background lighting that made it even harder to see the asteroid.

Physicists will be keeping a close eye on YR4 over the next seven years as it cycles through its orbit around the sun, and are eager to learn as much about it as they can.

They currently believe it is between 40m and 100m across, and if it hits earth could produce an impact equivalent to 8 megatons of TNT.

The “city-killer” name comes from scientists’ prediction that the blast would blow a crater the size of a city into the Earth’s crust.

A terrifying simulation has been produced showing the devastating impact it could have.

The day of potential collision has been calculated as December 22, 2032 – just before Christmas.

There’s also a 0.3 per cent chance that the asteroid could smash into the moon, rather than our planet.

David Rankin, an operations engineer for the University of Arizona, said that if the moon was hit we would be able to see the strike with our own eyes.

He said: “There is the possibility this would eject some material back out that could hit the Earth, but I highly doubt it would cause any major threat.

“It would be very visible from Earth.”

Bryce said that, despite the chance of danger, he finds YR4 “to be extremely exciting” due to “the scientific potential of studying such a small asteroid in high detail”.

He added that this could be the final “chance we have to observe the asteroid from Gemini” before it approaches again in 2028.

The rock is expected to fade around mid-March, making it more difficult to detect from the ground, but passes nearby Earth around once every four years.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/13562947/chilling-new-telescope-photos-city-killer-asteroid/

Holding long-term global warming to two degrees Celsius — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a stark new analysis published by leading scientists.

Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal “Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development” and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought.

Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming.

An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate panel, which gives the planet a 50 percent chance of keeping warming under 2C by the year 2100, “is an implausible scenario,” Hansen told a briefing Tuesday.

“That scenario is now impossible,” said Hansen, formerly a top NASA climate scientist who famously announced to the US Congress in 1988 that global warming was underway.

“The two degree target is dead.”

Instead, he and co-authors argued, the amount of greenhouse gases already pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels meant increased warming is now guaranteed.

Temperatures will stay at or above 1.5C in the coming years — devastating coral reefs and fueling more intense storms — before rising to around 2.0C by 2045, they forecast.

They estimated polar ice melt and freshwater injection into the North Atlantic will trigger the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) within the next 20-30 years.

The current brings warmth to various parts of the globe and also carries nutrients necessary to sustain ocean life.

Its end “will lock in major problems including sea level rise of several meters — thus, we describe AMOC shutdown as the ‘point of no return,'” the paper argued.

The world’s nations agreed during the landmark Paris climate accord of 2015 to try to hold end-of-century warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Scientists identified the threshold as critical to preventing the breakdown of major ocean circulation systems, the abrupt thawing of boreal permafrost, and the collapse of tropical coral reefs.

The 1.5C target has already been breached over the past two years, according to data from the EU’s climate monitoring system Copernicus, though the Paris Agreement referred to a long-term trend over decades.

Source : https://www.ibtimes.com/top-climate-scientist-declares-2c-climate-goal-dead-3762361

Expert panel formed by state govt has warned that several pockets of the town are sinking due to man-made and natural causes. Locals say report did not factor in Tapovan tunnel.

Dehradun: An expert panel set up by the Uttarakhand government has found that several pockets of Chamoli district’s Joshimath town — a gateway to the Badrinath shrine, the Hemkund Sahib gurdwara, the popular hill station of Auli, and the India-China border — are sinking due to both man-made and natural factors. As a result, the government will be putting together an action plan that may include a construction ban as well as relocation of local residents from “unsafe” areas, ThePrint has learnt.

The panel’s report points to ‘ground subsidence’ — a gradual settling or sudden sinking of the earth’s surface due to removal or displacement of subsurface materials — that has induced structural defects and damage observed in almost all wards of Joshimath. ThePrint has accessed the report.

The committee comprising scientists and geologists was formed on the recommendation of the Chamoli district magistrate in July following repeated complaints from the local populace about sinking areas and deep cracks appearing on the buildings.

“Although the government is yet to receive the report, going by the information provided by the committee members, a solid action plan will be put in place on engineering aspects as well as relocation of people from unsafe locations in Joshimath town,” state disaster management secretary Ranjit Kumar Sinha told ThePrint.

Source: https://theprint.in/environment/parts-of-joshimath-town-sinking-uttarakhand-govt-may-go-for-construction-ban-relocation/1134269/