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Punjab is once again grappling with a surge in stubble burning incidents, triggering alarm over rising air pollution levels ahead of winter. According to the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB), the state has recorded 353 cases this season, marking a more than threefold increase in just the last ten days. Tarn Taran and Amritsar districts are leading the numbers, with 125 and 112 cases respectively, while Ferozepur and Patiala have also reported a rise. Despite the government’s continuous awareness campaigns and strict action including over Rs 8 lakh in fines and 149 FIRs, many farmers continue to set fire to crop residue to clear their fields quickly for Rabi sowing. Officials say that while overall incidents have declined over recent years due to sustained government efforts, the...

A devastating train collision in eastern Ethiopia has left at least 14 people dead and dozens injured after a crowded train carrying merchants crashed into a stationary one near Dire Dawa on Monday night. The train was reportedly returning from Dewale, near the Djibouti border, when the accident occurred. Dire Dawa mayor Ibrahim Usman confirmed the casualties and expressed deep sorrow over the tragic event, also acknowledging delays in medical response. Eyewitnesses said the lack of immediate ambulance support forced local residents to pull injured passengers from the wreckage themselves. Authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the collision, while emergency teams continue to provide medical aid to the injured. The accident has once again raised concerns about ra...

Argentina faces a profound challenge in committing to long-term climate adaptation due to its chronically volatile macroeconomic and political environment, despite the country high vulnerability to extreme climate events. The dominance of short-term crises such as high inflation, recurrent debt, and policy instability overshadows the necessity of sustained, forward-looking investments required for climate resilience. Structural Barriers to Adaptation Effective climate adaptation demands long-term institutional commitment and investments with uncertain, delayed returns, which are undermined by Argentina's structural issues: • Short-Term Policy Cycles: Frequent changes in administration, macroeconomic shocks, and fiscal constraints repeatedly disrupt policy continuity, making long-t...

The accelerating impacts of climate change including rising seas, extreme drought, and land degradation are driving human displacement at an unprecedented rate. In the past decade, weather-related disasters have forced the equivalent of 60,000 people from their homes every day. By 2050, climate change is projected to displace approximately 143 million people across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. To counter this humanitarian crisis, nature-based solutions (restoring and managing ecosystems) are offering cost-effective ways to enhance adaptation and allow vulnerable communities to remain on their land. 1. Coastal Resilience Through Mangrove Restoration In areas facing sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion, mangroves act as a natural defense, stabilizing shorelin...

Human-driven climate change has intensified wildfire seasons across the Americas making fires up to 30 times larger than they would have been in a pre-industrial climate, according to a major new international report. The State of Wildfires 2025 study, led by scientists from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the UK Met Office, the University of Leicester, the University of East Anglia, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), paints a grim picture of how warming temperatures are fueling unprecedented fire activity. Between March 2024 and February 2025, wildfires scorched 3.7 million square kilometres of land worldwide an area larger than India. Over 100 million people were affected, and global damages reached $215 billion. Fires released more ...

Surface ruptures caused by earthquakes can tear through the ground, damaging pipelines, roads, dams, and power plants. While engineering solutions can reduce some risks, experts say the best protection remains avoiding construction directly across active faults. A new article in Reviews of Geophysics revisits the evolution of Probabilistic Fault Displacement Hazard Assessments (PFDHAs), a scientific method that helps predict and quantify surface rupture hazards. Fault displacement happens when an earthquake ruptures the Earth’s surface, shifting the ground horizontally or vertically by several meters. Such movements can severely damage critical infrastructure built across faults, making it essential to understand where and how these ruptures might occur. PFDHAs estimate the likelihoo...

Global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels surged faster in 2024 than in any year since records began a stark warning that the Amazon rainforest, once a powerful carbon sink, is faltering under pressure. A new satellite analysis by researchers from the University of Edinburgh reveals that the Amazon absorbed far less CO₂ in 2024, contributing to the record global rise of 3.73 parts per million (ppm) well above the long-term average. This finding comes from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2), a satellite launched in 2014 that has transformed how scientists monitor CO₂ across the planet. Yet, despite being fully operational and capable of running until 2040, OCO-2 now faces shutdown due to proposed NASA budget cuts. Since the 1950s, CO₂ concentrations have climbed from 315 ...

LONDON – The decades-old environmental mantra "Reduce, reuse, recycle" is a form of "corporate gaslighting" that shifts blame for the climate crisis from polluters to individuals, according to a new analysis published in The Conversation. The author a scholar-activist argues that true change requires adopting a more radical set of principles focused on systemic issues: Regulation, Redistribution, and Reparations. The core critique states that corporate public relations campaigns have successfully convinced the public to focus on their personal environmental footprint, thereby distracting them from structural, policy-driven change that would threaten corporate profits. The analysis highlights that emissions under the average person direct control account for less than 20% of total glo...

New Australian research has effectively debunked claims that individual fossil fuel projects are too small to impact global warming, linking each new investment in coal and gas extraction to measurable increases in global temperatures. Published in the Nature journal Climate Action the research led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century and involving climate scientists from six Australian universities focuses on the Scarborough gas project in Northwest Australia. Measurable Warming and Significant Impacts The study found that the Scarborough project alone, with its estimated output of 876 million tonnes Mt of CO2 emissions, is projected to cause an increase of approximately 0.00039^C in global temperature. While this temperature increase may seem s...

GUWAHATI/NEW DELHI – India latest monsoon season has proven that climate change is transforming the life-giving rains into a destructive force, characterized by longer dry spells and more extreme, intense downpours. Although the total rainfall for the season was only 8% above normal, this modest figure masked a pattern of devastating local events across the country. The Indian summer monsoon, which provides about 80% of India annual rainfall, arrived a week early this year the fastest onset in 16 years. However this early start quickly transitioned into a pattern of severe erratic weather that caused widespread destruction: Key Disaster Events Across India • Himalayan Cloudburst: The Himalayan village of Dharali was nearly washed away after a cloudburst in early August. The result...