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  New Delhi: Residents of Sunder Nagri in northeast Delhi are documenting their daily experiences of surviving increasingly severe heatwaves, offering a ground level picture of how extreme temperatures affect people living in densely populated and low income neighbourhoods. Around 40 households are participating in a community project in which residents maintain “garmi khatas”, or heat diaries. The diaries record their daily routines, working conditions, health, mood, household expenses and the strategies they use to cope with extreme heat. The initiative aims to fill a gap in conventional heat planning, which largely relies on meteorological data such as air temperatures and heatwave thresholds. Researchers say such information does not fully capture how heat affects people ...

Gujarat: A carbon removal project in Gujarat Banni grasslands is turning the invasive Prosopis juliflora tree into biochar, a charcoal like material that can store carbon in soil for long periods. The initiative is linked to the growing voluntary carbon market with major companies including Google, Microsoft, Lufthansa, Swiss Re and Capgemini involved in purchasing carbon removal credits from Varaha ClimateAg, a Gurugram based climate tech company. Prosopis juliflora was introduced in Kachchh in the 1960s to combat desertification. Over time, however, the invasive tree spread extensively across the Banni grasslands, replacing native vegetation and reducing fodder availability. Researchers and local communities say the species now dominates a significant portion of the grassland. The ...

  Scientists have discovered that animals may have been consuming and breaking down nature’s own biodegradable plastics for hundreds of millions of years. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology found that numerous animals possess enzymes capable of breaking down polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), natural bioplastics produced by bacteria and other microorganisms as carbon and energy reserves. The discovery began with an unusual marine worm, Olavius algarvensis. The worm has no mouth or digestive system and relies on bacteria living beneath its skin. Some of these bacteria store large amounts of PHA. Researchers found that the worm produces an enzyme capable of breaking down this material, allowing it to access the carbon stored inside its bacterial partne...

  A camera trap has captured a Eurasian lynx at around 17,400 feet (5,300 metres) on the Tso Lhamo plateau in Sikkim, providing the first confirmed photographic evidence of the elusive wild cat in the state high altitude wilderness. The sighting is significant because the Tso Lhamo plateau forms a natural transition between Central Asian and Eastern Himalayan ecosystems. Although the landscape appears barren, the area supports a surprisingly diverse wildlife community. Camera trap monitoring has also recorded snow leopards and Pallas’s cats along with Tibetan wolves and Tibetan sand foxes. Their prey includes Tibetan gazelles, Tibetan argali and southern kiang, suggesting that the plateau supports a functioning high-altitude food web. The lynx photograph came from a long t...

  The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has approved a change in land use of a 10 acre plot in Ghazipur paving the way for a fresh waste processing facility with a capacity of at least 800 tonnes per day. The project will also include a biogas plant aimed at reducing the flow of newly generated municipal waste to Delhi’s major landfill sites. The land secured by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) near the Integrated Freight Complex at Ghazipur, will be used to process fresh municipal waste. Five acres have been earmarked for the waste processing facility, while the remaining five acres will accommodate the biogas plant. The DDA approved changing the land-use category from “Commercial (Freight Complex)” to “Utility” for the project. Officials said the facility is expecte...

  A huge mountain of discarded clothing is accumulating in Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, highlighting the growing environmental impact of the global fast-fashion and second-hand clothing trade. Chile receives around 60,000 tonnes of used clothing every year, much of it entering through the free trade zone of Iquique. While a portion of the garments is sorted and resold, clothing that fails to find buyers can end up abandoned or dumped in landfills near Alto Hospicio in the Tarapacá Region. Satellite images have captured the scale of the textile waste, with enormous piles of clothes, shoes and other garments covering parts of the desert landscape. Why is so much clothing ending up in the Atacama? The port and free trade zone of Iquique have b...

  Around 6,000 years ago the Sahara Desert looked dramatically different. A vast body of water known as Mega Chad covered roughly 360,000 square kilometres in what is now southern Sahara larger than all five North American Great Lakes combined. The ancient lake existed during Africa’s Humid Period, when much of North Africa was significantly wetter and greener than today. Changes in Earth’s orbit increased summer sunlight over the northern tropics, strengthening the African monsoon and bringing rainfall deep into the Sahara. As orbital conditions changed, rainfall weakened and the giant lake gradually shrank. Researchers have reconstructed its former size using ancient shorelines and lake sediments, with estimates of its peak area ranging from about 360,000 to more than 400,0...

Atolls are among the world most unusual and fragile landforms developing over millions of years from volcanic islands and coral reefs. These ring shaped islands surround lagoons and are mainly found in warm tropical and subtropical oceans. According to the traditional theory proposed by Charles Darwin in 1842 an atoll begins as an underwater volcano. As lava builds up, the volcano eventually rises above sea level and forms an island. Coral reefs then develop around the island. Over time, the volcanic island gradually erodes and sinks beneath the ocean. The surrounding coral continues growing toward the surface, eventually leaving behind a ring shaped reef enclosing a lagoon. This process can take between 1 million and 30 million years. Scientists have also proposed an alternative ...

The Netherlands has turned 37.2 million tonnes of dredged lakebed sediment into a chain of artificial islands designed to restore wildlife habitats and improve the ecosystem of Markermeer lake. Since 2016, engineers and conservationists have used sand, clay, silt and peat removed from the lakebed to create Marker Wadden, an archipelago of seven artificial islands and surrounding underwater habitats covering about 1,300 hectares. The project aims to address ecological problems that developed in Markermeer after decades of water engineering. The lake was separated from the former Zuiderzee through the construction of dams, creating a freshwater basin with limited natural connections between land and water. Over time, large quantities of fine sediment accumulated on the lakebed. Stro...

  The southwest monsoon is showing early signs of retreat, with dry winds beginning to enter parts of northwest India. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), India’s cumulative rainfall since June 4 remains 13% below normal. Rainfall has been uneven across the country. While parts of western and central India have recorded near normal rainfall, several areas of the Indo Gangetic plains, Northeast and southern peninsular India continue to face deficits. With the monsoon season entering its later phase the chances of reducing the overall rainfall gap are becoming increasingly dependent on the development of fresh weather systems over the Bay of Bengal.