Month: January 2026

    Delhi witnessed its warmest January day in seven years on Thursday, with the maximum temperature touching 27.1 degrees Celsius at the Safdarjung weather station, according to the India Meteorological Department. The last time the national capital recorded a higher maximum temperature in January was in 2019, when it reached 28.7 degrees Celsius. The temperature recorded at Safdarjung was 6.8 degrees above the seasonal average and nearly three degrees higher than Wednesday’s reading. Ayanagar also reported unusually warm conditions, with the maximum temperature settling at 25.4 degrees Celsius, which was 5.4 degrees above normal. Despite the warmer daytime conditions, the city continued to experience cold mornings. Safdarjung recorded the lowest minimum temperature ...

    A four-lane national highway with Assam’s first elevated wildlife corridor is set to cut through Kaziranga National Park, a project the Centre says will improve connectivity in Upper Assam while safeguarding the movement of wild animals. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the ₹6,950-crore project on 18 January, describing it as a development initiative designed to keep the forest ecosystem intact. The highway will upgrade the existing two-lane National Highway-715 into a four-lane road, with long stretches elevated over key wildlife corridors used by rhinos, elephants and tigers. According to government releases, the project spans 86 kilometres between Kaliabor and Numaligarh. It includes widening 30 kilometres of the existing highway, buil...

    A recent circular issued by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has triggered concern among conservationists, legal experts and tribal rights activists, who warn that the decision could open India’s forests to commercial plantations while weakening long-standing safeguards meant to protect biodiversity and forest-dependent communities. Issued in the first week of January 2026, the circular allows private and non-government entities to undertake afforestation and plantation activities on forest land without paying Net Present Value (NPV) or undertaking compensatory afforestation, requirements that are otherwise mandatory when forest land is diverted for non-forest purposes. Critics argue that the move blurs the distinction between eco...

    The Delhi National Capital Region continued to experience winter weather conditions on January 21, 2026, as the India Meteorological Department issued a Yellow Alert for shallow to moderate fog during early morning hours. The advisory warns of reduced visibility across parts of Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurugram and Faridabad, particularly during morning commute hours, while daytime conditions are expected to remain partly cloudy and largely stable. According to IMD forecasts, minimum temperatures in the region hovered between 7 and 9 degrees Celsius, while maximum temperatures are likely to reach 22 to 24 degrees Celsius. Light winds of 5 to 10 kilometres per hour are supporting fog formation during early hours, with visibility dropping to 200–500 metres in isolated ...

    An intense Arctic air mass sweeping across large parts of the United States has triggered warnings of an unusual winter hazard “exploding trees” in states including Michigan and Minnesota, as temperatures plunge well below freezing. According to forecasts, maximum temperatures on Friday and Saturday are expected to stay in the single digits, while morning lows through the weekend could drop at least 10°F below zero, accompanied by dangerous wind chills. The National Weather Service has warned that the extreme cold could also lead to hazardous travel, power outages and burst water pipes. Meteorologist Max Velocity issued an “exploding tree” risk alert for much of Michigan, including the Upper Peninsula and parts of the Lower Peninsula, as well as across Minnesota a...

    India’s environmental governance framework has entered a new phase with the notification of the Environmental (Protection) Fund Rules, 2026. While the move is officially aimed at strengthening enforcement and remediation, critics warn that the structure of the fund risks creating a perverse incentive system where environmental damage, rather than prevention, becomes the financial backbone of regulation. Notified by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on January 15, 2026, and published in the Gazette of India, the rules operationalise a long-unused provision of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. For the first time, penalties collected for environmental violations will flow into a centrally structured fund, with parallel mechanisms at the ...

    More than a third of India’s cattle-rearing households do not sell milk, instead prioritising non-market uses such as dung, draught power and income from selling animals, according to a new study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). The findings challenge the long-held assumption that milk production is the primary motivation for keeping cattle across rural India. Released on January 20, 2026, the study estimates that nearly 38 per cent of cattle rearers, around 30 million households, do not participate in milk sales. While 31 per cent of these households rear cattle mainly for family milk consumption, the remaining 5.6 million households keep bovines entirely for purposes unrelated to either selling or consuming milk. Non-dairy cattle rearing s...

    Pakistan has called on the international community to recognise water insecurity as a systemic global risk, warning that disruptions in shared river basins threaten food security, livelihoods and regional stability. The appeal was made amid rising tensions with India following New Delhi’s unilateral decision to place the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. Speaking at a United Nations policy roundtable on global water stress, Pakistan’s Acting Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Usman Jadoon, said water insecurity is no longer a local or regional concern but a global challenge affecting food production, energy systems, public health and human security across regions. “For Pakistan, this is a lived reality,” Jadoon said, describing the country as a climate-...

Replanting tropical rainforests after logging may appear to be a straightforward solution to environmental damage, but new scientific research suggests recovery is far more complex and uncertain than previously believed. A long-term study conducted in the rainforests of Malaysian Borneo shows that even decades after logging, replanted forests struggle to support the survival of young trees when compared to untouched natural forests. The research was carried out by scientists from the University of Exeter, ETH Zürich, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and the United Kingdom Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Over an 18-month period, the team tracked the survival of 5,119 seedlings across different forest conditions in northern Borneo, including pristine forests, naturally regen...

    Every winter in north India, the cycle repeats itself with grim predictability. Crop fields are set on fire, villages disappear under smoke, and children breathe air thick with pollutants. Farmers are often blamed, but the reality is more complex. Stubble burning is not an act of neglect; it is an act of necessity. Clearing fields quickly and cheaply between harvests leaves farmers with few viable alternatives. Agricultural biomass pyrolysis offers a different pathway, one where residue becomes a resource rather than a hazard. Yet, for this alternative to move beyond promise, it needs a central pillar of support: sustained and purposeful corporate social responsibility funding. For small and marginal farmers, time and money are always in short supply. Decisions ar...