Month: June 2025

In a major step towards cleaning the Yamuna River, the Delhi government has announced plans to set up 27 new Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) across the city's redevelopment zones by the end of this year. The move aims to curb the flow of untreated industrial waste and sewage that has long polluted the river. Currently, 13 CETPs serve 17 industrial areas in Delhi, with a total capacity to treat about 200 million litres of wastewater daily. However, many of these plants have come under criticism for failing to meet pollution standards, especially in removing harmful heavy metals before wastewater is released into the city's stormwater drains that eventually empty into the Yamuna. This decision follows a recent meeting between central and state officials, where concerns over th...

Communities in southeastern South Africa are grappling with the aftermath of devastating floods that have claimed at least 78 lives, with fears that the toll may rise as search operations continue. The town of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape province has emerged as the worst-hit area, drawing the personal attention of President Cyril Ramaphosa, who visited the region on Thursday. The president met with local disaster management teams and surveyed the damage at several sites, including the tragic location where a school bus was swept away by raging floodwaters, killing six students, the bus driver, and another adult. Four other students who were on the bus remain missing, prompting an urgent search by rescue crews. The floods, triggered by days of relentless rain, have left parts of the E...

Tropical cyclones known as hurricanes or typhoons in different parts of the world are among the most dangerous natural disasters on Earth. In the past 50 years alone, these storms have caused a staggering $1.4 trillion in damages worldwide, devastating communities and taking countless lives. But now, thanks to a new breakthrough by Google DeepMind and Google Research, predicting these deadly storms could become faster and more accurate. On Thursday, Google launched Weather Lab, an interactive online platform that showcases the latest experimental weather prediction models powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Among these tools is a brand-new AI-based tropical cyclone model that can forecast a cyclone's formation, track, strength, size, and shape up to 15 days in advance. What ...

When Hurricane Idalia roared towards Florida’s Big Bend in August 2023, it stunned forecasters with its sudden burst of power. In less than 24 hours, the storm grew rapidly from a Category 1 to a powerful Category 4 hurricane, a process called rapid intensification that made predicting its final strength extremely difficult. But what gave Idalia this extra boost? A new study by scientists from the University of South Florida (USF) College of Marine Science suggests the answer may have been flowing in quietly from the land river water. For decades, forecasters have known that warm ocean waters, atmospheric heat, and wind conditions help fuel storms. But these usual suspects couldn’t fully explain Idalia’s explosive growth, especially since the storm’s wind conditions weren’t particula...

Delhi is experiencing dangerously rising temperatures, with last year's historic 52.3°C reading at Mungeshpur standing as the city’s highest ever. As the summer of 2025 unfolds, the heat continues to grip the capital with intense and prolonged heatwaves. In May 2024, the Mungeshpur weather station recorded a scorching 52.3°C the highest temperature ever noted in Delhi’s history. However, this reading was flagged by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) as an "outlier." While some experts suspected a possible sensor error or unusual local factors influencing the data, the reading reflected the growing severity of the city's heat conditions. At the same time, Delhi’s main observatory at Safdarjung reported a high of 46.8°C a more reliable indicator of the city’s extreme heat that day....

A new study has warned that by 2030, cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Surat, Thane, Hyderabad, Patna, and Bhubaneswar will see a two-fold rise in heatwave days, worsening the already severe risks from climate change. The report, released on June 10, 2025, by IPE Global and GIS technology leader Esri India, highlights the alarming future facing India’s urban centres as temperatures soar and extreme weather events become more frequent. The study Weathering the Storm: Managing Monsoons in a Warming Climate was unveiled at the International Global-South Climate Risk Symposium in New Delhi. It offers detailed district-level assessments of how erratic rainfall and extreme heat are intensifying across India, putting both urban and rural regions at risk. One of the report's most strik...

Delhi may soon get a break from the relentless heat as the southwest monsoon is expected to arrive nearly 10 days ahead of schedule, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). Traditionally, the monsoon reaches the capital around June 30, but this year it might set in as early as the third week of June. After a brief lull of almost 10 days, the monsoon has picked up pace again, especially over South India. States such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Konkan, and Maharashtra have been experiencing heavy to very heavy rainfall since Wednesday. This fresh surge in the monsoon system indicates that it is moving swiftly northward, ready to cover other parts of the country soon. In its latest update, the IMD said the second phase of the monsoon will spread to eastern India ne...

The entire Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is expected to witness a summer monsoon that is both hotter and wetter than average, warned the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in a new climate outlook released on June 11, 2025. According to the analysis of global and regional meteorological data, temperatures across the HKH zone could be up to 2°C higher than usual, while rainfall is also projected to exceed normal levels in large parts of the region. “The forecasts we’ve studied are unanimous in predicting a hotter monsoon across the entire HKH, with a trend towards higher-than-normal rainfall in major parts of the region,” said Arun Bhakta Shrestha, senior advisor at ICIMOD and one of the report's reviewers. Almost the Entire Region to Be Affec...

Countries across the world are embracing carbon pricing as a key tool to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and boost public revenues, according to the World Bank’s State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2025 report released on June 12, 2025. The number of carbon pricing systems worldwide has surged dramatically from just five in 2005 to 80 active systems today covering almost two-thirds of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). India, Brazil, and Türkiye are among nations developing new carbon pricing frameworks. Carbon pricing mechanisms are designed to make polluters pay for the environmental damage their emissions cause, such as crop failures, health costs from heatwaves, property loss from floods, and sea-level rise. By putting a price on carbon emissions, these systems aim to ho...

A new satellite study has revealed that emperor penguin numbers in Antarctica are dropping much faster than previously feared, sparking fresh concerns about the species' survival as climate change worsens. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey, publishing their findings in Nature Communications: Earth & Environment, found a 22 per cent decline in emperor penguin numbers over the past 15 years across key regions the Antarctic Peninsula, Weddell Sea, and Bellingshausen Sea. This data covers nearly 30 per cent of the continent’s emperor penguin colonies, raising fears that the problem could be just as severe across the entire Antarctic region. Dr Peter Fretwell, one of the lead scientists, warned that while there is some uncertainty in satellite-based wildlife counting, the ...