Rampratap Nath

Making Sense of‘Climate Sensitivity New Study Narrows the Range of Uncertainty in Future Climate Projections NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP v4) trend map of observed global surface temperature change for the period from 1979 to 2019. Future global warming depends on Earth's climate sensitivity and our emissions. Credit: NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies Recently, an international research team published a comprehensive  review  in the journal Reviews of Geophysics on our state of understanding of Earth's "climate sensitivity," a key measure of how much our climate will change as greenhouse gas emissions increase. Essentially, by narrowing the range of estimates, the researchers found that climate sensitivity isn’t so low that it should be ignored, but it’s also not so high that there is no hope for the planet’s recovery. We asked the two NASA authors on the study — Kate Marvel, jointly of Columbia University in New York and NA...

Five of the world's biggest environmental problems These five megatrends present major global threats for planet Earth — problems that must be solved if the world is to remain a supportive habitat for humans and other species. DW looks at causes and possible solutions. 1. Air pollution and climate change. Problem:  Overloading of the atmosphere and of ocean waters with carbon. Atmospheric CO2 absorbs and re-emits infrared-wavelength radiation, leading to warmer air, soils, and ocean surface waters - which is good: The planet would be frozen solid without this. Unfortunately, there's now too much carbon in the air. Burning of fossil fuels, deforestation for agriculture, and industrial activities have pushed up atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 280 parts per million (ppm) 200 years ago, to about 400 ppm today. That's an unprecedented rise, in both size and speed. The result:  climate disruption . Carbon overloading is only one form of air pollution caused by bur...

Child labour and exploitation Child labour deprives children of their right to go to school and reinforces intergenerational cycles of poverty According to data from Census 2011, the number of child labourers in India is 10.1 million of which 5.6 million are boys and 4.5 million are girls. A total of 152 million children – 64 million girls and 88 million boys – are estimated to be in child labour globally, accounting for almost one in ten of all children worldwide. Despite rates of child labour declining over the last few years, children are still being q in some severe forms of child labour such aas bonded labour, child soldiers, and trafficking. Across India child labourers can be found in a variety of industries: in brick kilns, carpet weaving, garment making, domestic service, food and refreshment services (such as tea stalls), agriculture, fisheries and mining. Children are also at risk of various other forms of exploitation including sexual exploitation and production of child po...

Covid-19 outbreak – Accentuating the importance of monitoring & evaluation during pandemics The Covid-19 pandemic is unarguably one of the greatest challenges which the world has faced since the World War II.The virus which has killed millions globally, has unprecedently brought all the global economies to a standstill. To curb the spread of the virus, the Government of India (GoI) too announced a nationwide lockdown on 25th March 2020. After more than two months of practicing lockdown, only a few days back the restrictions have started getting uplifted pan-India. Referring a tracker developed by the University of Oxford, which measures the policy response of the different Governments across the globe against Covid-19, the GoI’s response has been categorized as one of the most stringent in the world.As per the details available on the official website (www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/covidtracker), the tracker which was initially launched with the data of 73 countries, features real-t...