Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Stalagmite key to predicting droughts, floods for India: Study

News

• An unusual cave in Meghalaya has helped unlock secrets about climate change, according to scientists ;data from stalagmites in India could help better predict monsoon patterns, droughts and floods in the country.

Findings

Researchers studied the last 50 years of growth of a stalagmite from Mawmluh Cave in Meghalaya, an area credited as the rainiest place on Earth.

• The study, found an unexpected connection between winter rainfall amounts in northeast India and climatic conditions in the Pacific Ocean.
• Winter rainfall following weak monsoon years in India can alleviate water stress for farmers. This distant link between land and ocean records could aid in predicting dry season rainfall amounts in northeast India.
• Each year, monsoon rains between June and September provide water for roughly 1.5 billion people in India.
• Changes in monsoon strength and the timing of its onset or withdrawal can trigger either drought or flooding, with devastating consequences, highlighting the need for effective ways to predict and prepare for rainfall variations.
• Stalagmites from Mawmluh Cave and the surrounding region indicate the recurrence of intense, multiyear droughts in India over the last several thousand years.

Ocean heat hits record high: UN

News

• Ocean heat hit a record high in 2018, the United Nations has said, raising urgent new concerns about the threat global warming is posing to marine life.

Beyond News

• In its latest State of the Climate overview, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reaffirmed that the last four years had been the hottest on record figures previously announced in provisional drafts of the flagship report.
• But the final version of the report highlighted worrying developments in other climate indicators beyond surface temperature.
• 2018 saw new records for ocean heat content in the upper 700 metres.
• The agency said the UN had data for heat content in the upper 700 metres of the ocean dating back to 1955.
• Last year also saw new heat records for the ocean’s upper 2,000 metres, but data for that range only goes back to 2005. The previous records for both ranges were set in 2017.
• UN Secretary-General described the latest findings as “another strong wake-up call” for governments, cities and businesses to take action.
• About 93 percent of excess heat trapped around the Earth by greenhouse gases that come from the burning of fossil fuels accumulates in the world’s oceans.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

92% in Asia exposed to harmful air

News

• Around 92% of the population in the Asia Pacific region are exposed to levels of air pollution that pose a significant risk to their health, according to UN Environment.
• Some of the Asian countries have taken steps to limit its effects.

Findings

• As public anger rises over toxic air, authorities have turned to spraying water, which is thought to stick to pollutants and carry them to the ground.
• But tools such as water cannons have been criticised as having little effect and being a “band-aid” solution that distracts from root causes.
• While New Delhi the world’s most polluted major city tried in 2017 to use helicopters to sprinkle water over the city, but the choppers were not able to fly due to low visibility caused by smog.
• Bangkok tried a raft of measures to combat a murky haze that blanketed the city in January, including spraying overpasses with water, cloud seeding.
• Cloud-seeding is used to stimulate rain by injecting chemicals into clouds using rockets, cannons or aircraft, but the technique is not always successful.
• An attempt by South Korea to create artificial rain failed.
• The northern Chinese city of Xi’an is experimenting with a giant air purifier the size of an industrial smokestack which can reduce PM2.5 concentration by 15 per cent within 10 square kilometres, according to researchers.
• Hong Kong opened a tunnel equipped with air purification system.
• The government says it will be able to remove at least 80 per cent of harmful particulates and nitrogen dioxide using large fans which suck exhaust into air purification plants in three ventilation buildings along the tunnel.
• New Delhi had announced a plan to install huge air purifiers at traffic intersections and mount air filters on the roofs of buses that trap pollutants as they move, according to Hindustan Times.
• During particularly bad spates of air pollution, which tend to come during the winter, many residents in smoggy Chinese cities escape to cleaner places, such as resorts in the south of the country, for a temporary break and return after it has cleared.
• Although experts say residents in smoggy cities are unlikely to see health effects from breathing bottled air, that hasn’t stopped entrepreneurs from selling them canisters of the stuff from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Switzerland.
• In China, “anti-smog” teas are promoted by vendors as a way to clean the lungs, while Mongolian residents drink “oxygen cocktails” made by spraying oxygen into glasses of juice using machines or cans of air.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Forest dept. to conduct detailed assessment of factors causing fires

News

• Following an unprecedented phase of forest fires that gutted large tracts of forest lands in the Nilgiris Forest Division this year, the Forest Department has planned to assess the factors that caused the fires.

Beyond News

• District Forest Officer, Nilgiris division, said that the department was now spreading awareness among the public on the measures they needed to adopt to prevent forest fires.
• While lack of rainfall has been one of the main factors for the increase in the number of fires, improper disposal of flammable items, and starting fires on purpose to clear land for grazing have also accentuated the crisis.
• Many of the fires have been centered around old eucalyptus, wattle and pine plantations, declared as forests, where there is a build up of biomass.
• Officials said that one of the reasons leading to a build-up of biomass in these forests was decrease in the number of people who collected eucalyptus leaves from these forests to produce oil.

Indian Navy inducts sixth indigenous transport ship

News

• The sixth indigenously designed and built transport ship, LCU L56, has been inducted into the Navy, the Defence Ministry said.
• Amphibious operations capability, including transport of troops and equipment, will be enhanced with the addition of this Landing Craft Utility ship.

ISRO launches first spy satellite

News

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the country’s first electronic surveillance satellite, EMISAT, from Sriharikota in coastal Andhra Pradesh.

Beyond News

• As many as 28 small satellites of international customers were also put in space as secondary riders.
• Space-based electronic intelligence or ELINT from the 436-kg spacecraft will add teeth to situational awareness of the Armed Forces as it will provide location and information of hostile radars placed at the borders; this will be another dimension to current land or aircraft-based ELINT.
• ISRO, which is said to have built the satellite body for the DRDO payload, merely said the spacecraft would measure the electromagnetic spectrum.
• An ISRO release said that as EMISAT came out, It’s two solar arrays were deployed automatically. The ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network at Bengaluru assumed control of the satellite. In the coming days, the satellite will be brought to its final operational configuration.
• The multi-orbit mission totally lasted three hours and released all 29 spacecraft in nearly the first two hours. Overall, three sets of payloads were let out at three different orbits in space.
• About 17 minutes after takeoff, EMISAT was ejected first at an orbit 749 km away from Earth. The small ‘cube’ satellites, belonging to four countries and together weighing 220 kg, were released after about 40 minutes at a lower orbit of 504 km. To get the lower orbit, the fourth stage of the rocket or PS4 had to be restarted twice.
• ISRO has started reusing PS4 as an innovated, low-cost, space-friendly test bed for its own microgravity experiments and those of others. It has been gradually putting additional support systems also on every new PS4; the power generating solar panels are new this time.
• This is the third such mission and carries an ISRO test on Automatic Identification System (AIS) related to tracking ships on sea.
• AMSAT or the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, India, has sent a payload called the Automatic Packet Repeating System.
• This is expected to help amateur radio operators to get improved locational accuracy in their tracking and monitoring.
• The third one, the Advanced Retarding Potential Analyser for Ionospheric Studies has been sent up by ISRO’s university, the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology.

RBI tweaks NPA divergence disclosure norms

News

• The Reserve Bank of India asked banks to disclose bad loan divergences in their financial statements if the additional provisioning exceeds 10% of profit before provision and contingencies.

Beyond News

• In a notification, the RBI said it is observed that some banks, on account of low or negative net profit after tax, are required to disclose divergences even where the additional provisioning assessed by RBI is small, which is contrary to the regulatory intent that only material divergences should be disclosed.
• Therefore, it has been decided that henceforth, banks should disclose divergences, if “the additional provisioning for NPAs assessed by RBI exceeds 10% of the reported profit before provisions and contingencies for the reference period”.
• Earlier, banks were to make suitable disclosures if the additional provisioning requirements assessed by RBI exceeded 15% of the published net profits after tax for the reference period.
• The RBI further said disclosure has also to be made if the additional gross NPAs identified by RBI exceed 15% of the published incremental gross NPAs for the reference period.
• In another notification regarding large exposures framework (LEF), the RBI said non-centrally cleared derivatives exposures will be outside the purview of exposure limits till April 1, 2020.
• However, banks must compute these exposures separately and report to the Department of Banking Regulation on quarterly basis.

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