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A fresh low-pressure area over the southeast Bay of Bengal is expected to intensify into a cyclonic storm by October 27, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Friday. The developing system could bring heavy to extremely heavy rainfall across coastal Odisha and southern West Bengal from Monday. According to Manorama Mohanty, director of the Bhubaneswar Meteorological Centre, the system has been moving west-northwestward and is likely to strengthen over the next few days. “It will become a depression by October 25, deepen further on October 26, and intensify into a cyclonic storm by the morning of October 27,” Mohanty said. While it’s too early to determine the storm’s exact landfall location, the IMD warned that Odisha’s coastal districts will be most affected between Octo...

What will our planet look like in the year 2100? A new online game called FutureGuessr is helping people imagine just that. Launched in June 2025, the free interactive game combines climate communication with visual storytelling, showing players futuristic images of places transformed by climate change and asking them to guess where they are. Developed in partnership with Réseau Action Climat, the game takes inspiration from the popular geography challenge GeoGuessr. But instead of exploring the present world, FutureGuessr immerses players in visual projections of Earth’s future revealing how melting ice caps, rising seas, and extreme weather may reshape landscapes. Available in English and French, the game aims to make climate science personal and engaging. Once a player makes a gue...

About 50 kilometers southwest of Bangkok, the small fishing village of Khun Samut Chin stands as a stark symbol of how climate change is reshaping coastal life. Once a thriving settlement surrounded by mangroves and fertile land, the village is now being swallowed by the sea at an alarming rate. Thailand’s coast is eroding by nearly a meter each year across hundreds of kilometers, but in Khun Samut Chin, the problem is far worse. The shoreline retreats by up to five meters annually, and the land itself is sinking by one to two centimeters every year. Since the 1990s, more than six square kilometers have vanished beneath the waves. Only one part of the original village remains visible a Buddhist temple now surrounded by water, earning the name “the floating temple.” While climate chan...

A new global report has revealed that the world’s largest meat and dairy producers are now emitting more methane than major fossil fuel companies, making them key drivers of the climate crisis. The study, titled Roasting the Planet was released by Foodrise, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. It found that 45 of the biggest meat and dairy corporations together emitted about 1.02 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2023 more than the annual emissions of Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer. If these companies were a country, they would rank as the planet’s ninth-largest emitter. Methane, a greenhouse gas more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, accounted for 51 percent of these emissi...

A cloud seeding experiment conducted in Delhi’s Burari area has triggered political controversy after AAP leader and local MLA Sanjeev Jha alleged that the trial was carried out without notifying residents or public representatives. Jha claimed that the move violated standard operating procedures and raised transparency and safety concerns. The experiment, conducted by IIT Kanpur as part of Delhi’s broader pollution-control initiative, aimed to induce artificial rainfall using silver iodide and sodium chloride particles. However, due to insufficient atmospheric moisture, no rainfall occurred. Jha criticised the government’s handling of the exercise, saying that even as the area’s MLA, he was kept uninformed about the trial. “The government made a spectacle of events like the Rafale j...

In a major climate resilience initiative, the Andhra Pradesh government has announced plans to develop a 5-km-wide ‘Great Green Wall of Andhra Pradesh’ along its 1,053-km-long coastline by 2030. The project launched under the supervision of Deputy Chief Minister K. Pawan Kalyan and the Department of Environment, Forests, Science & Technology, aims to protect over three million people from cyclones, sea-level rise, and environmental degradation. Envisioned as a “living ecological shield,” the Great Green Wall (GGW) will serve as a multi-layered green buffer zone featuring mangroves, shelterbelt plantations, inland vegetation, and natural sand dunes. This vast ecological barrier is expected to absorb tidal energy, reduce storm surges, stabilise eroding shorelines, and promote sustaina...

India garbage crisis is spiraling into one of its most visible and persistent environmental failures. In cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Chennai, towering landfills have become grim symbols of neglect. One such mountain of waste in Delhi now stands 65 metres tall a literal monument to mismanagement. The country generates around 62 million tonnes of waste each year, a figure projected to rise to a staggering 436 million tonnes by 2050. Despite having over 2,500 official landfills and countless unofficial dumpsites, nearly 80 percent of the waste that reaches these sites remains unprocessed. Organic waste rots and releases methane, while plastic waste lingers for centuries. Yet, policy discussions continue to focus more on carbon emissions than on the growing piles of garbage po...

India has moved up one position to rank ninth in the world for total forest area, according to the Global Forest Resources Assessment (GFRA) 2025 released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Bali. The country has also retained its third-place position globally in annual forest area gain, marking a major stride in environmental conservation and sustainable forest management. As per the latest assessment, India’s forest cover stands at 72.7 million hectares. Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav hailed the achievement as a significant milestone, crediting it to the Modi government’s sustained efforts in forest protection, afforestation, and community-driven environmental action. Globally, Russia leads with the largest forest area at 832.6 million hectares, followed by Braz...

As Delhi continues to gasp under layers of toxic smog, journalist Rajdeep Sardesai’s opinion piece “Breathless on Diwali: Banning crackers isn’t ‘anti-Hindu’, polluted air is” reignites the debate between religious expression and public health. Each year, the Diwali week turns the national capital into one of the world’s most polluted cities, worsening respiratory illnesses. Despite Supreme Court restrictions on bursting crackers beyond 10 pm, enforcement remains weak. “We are trying, but people don’t listen,” a weary constable reportedly told Sardesai on Diwali night as loud explosions filled the air. This year, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai, lifted the blanket ban on firecrackers, citing a need to balance cultural traditions and regulation. However, Sardesai ar...