Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Changing climate puts, among others, India at risk: global study

News:

• India is among the countries which are at the greatest risk of food insecurity due to weather extremes caused by climate change, a global study suggests.

Beyond News

• Researchers examined how climate change could affect the vulnerability of different countries to food insecurity, when people lack access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.
• The study looked at 122 developing and least-developed countries, mostly in Asia, Africa and South America. The countries at the greatest vulnerability to food insecurity caused by a temperature spike of 2 degrees Celsius global are Oman, India, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Brazil.

Findings in the Study:

• Climate change is expected to lead to more extremes of both heavy rainfall and drought, with different effects in different parts of the world.
• Such weather extremes can increase vulnerability to food insecurity.
• Warming is expected to lead to wetter conditions, with floods putting food production at risk.
• Wetter conditions are expected to have the biggest impact in south and east Asia, with the most extreme projections suggesting the flow of the river Ganga could more than double at 2 degrees Celsius global warming.

Sahara Desert has grown by 10% since 1920: Study

News:

• The Sahara Desert has expanded by about 10 per cent since 1920 partly due to human-caused climate change, say researchers including one of Indian-origin.

Sahara:

• The Sahara is the world’s largest warm-weather desert and like all deserts, the boundaries of the Sahara fluctuate with the seasons, expanding in the dry winter and contracting during the wetter summer.

Findings in the Study:

• The findings of their study suggest that other deserts could be expanding as well.
• Deserts are defined by low average annual rainfall usually 100 millimetres of rain per year or less.
• The researchers analysed annual rainfall data recorded throughout Africa from 1920 to 2013 and found that the Sahara, which occupies much of the northern part of the continent, expanded by 10 percent during this period.
• When the scientists looked at seasonal trends over the same period, the most notable expansion of the Sahara occurred in summer, resulting in a nearly 16 per cent increase in the desert’s average area over the 93-year span covered by the study.
• The results suggest that human-caused climate change, as well as natural climate cycles, caused the desert’s expansion.
• The geographic pattern of expansion varied from season to season, with the largest differences along the Sahara’s northern and southern boundaries.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

India can play a more weighty role in Indo-Pacific region: U.S.

News

• The U.S. said that India has the “capability and potential” to play a more weighty role in the Indo-Pacific region.

Beyond News

• Briefing reporters on the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs,said it is in the U.S.’ interest as well as of the entire region that India plays an increasingly weighty role in the region.
• The use of term Indo-Pacific, as against Asia Pacific previously, by the Trump administration, he said “acknowledges the historical reality and the current day reality that South Asia and in particular, India plays a key role” in the Pacific, in East Asia and Southeast Asia.
• The presence of ASEAN leaders at the Republic Day was a truly significant sign of the increasing ties that India is pursuing particularly in Southeast Asia.

He also said that, the first year of the Trump Administration was for introducing the strategic concept to the region; which is free and open Indo-Pacific Strategy. The rest of the years of the Trump administration is the implementation of those strategy.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Icarus, the farthest star ever seen

News

• Scientists have detected the most distant star ever viewed, located more than halfway across the universe and named it after the ancient Greek mythological figure Icarus.

Beyond News

• The star was formally named MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star-1, but its discoverers dubbed it Icarus, who flew so close to the sun that his wings fashioned from wax and feathers melted, sending him plunging fatally into the sea.
• Researchers said they used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to spot the star, which is up to a million times more luminous and about twice as hot as our sun, residing 9.3 billion lights years away from Earth. It is a type of star called a blue supergiant.
• The star, located in a distant spiral galaxy, is at least 100 times further away than any other star previously observed, with the exception of things like the huge supernova explosions that mark the death of certain stars.
• The scientists took advantage of a phenomenon called ”gravitational lensing” to spot the star. It involves the bending of light by massive galaxy clusters in the line of sight, which magnifies more distant celestial objects. This makes dim, faraway objects that otherwise would be undetectable, like an individual star, visible.
• Because its light has taken so long to reach Earth, looking at this star is like peering back in time to when the universe was less than a third of its current age. The Big Bang that gave rise to the universe occurred 13.8 billion years ago.

New plant species found in Western Ghats

News

• Researchers from the University College reported the discovery of a new plant species from the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot.

Beyond News

• Classified as a sedge, the grass-like plant has been named Fimbristylis agasthyamalaensis, after the locality from which it was found.
• The researchers came across the species during an expedition to the marshy grasslands in the Ponmudi hills within the Agasthyamala Biosphere Reserve.
• The authors have recommended a preliminary conservation assessment of the plant as ‘critically endangered,’ according to IUCN criteria.
• The report says the species is highly prone to wild grazing.
• As the habitat falls within a tourism spot and the perimeter of a place of worship, the plant is also subject to anthropogenic pressures that could lead to its extinction in the absence of scientific conservation.
• The new species belongs to the Cyperaceae family.
• In India, the genus is represented by 122 species, of which 87 are reported from the Western Ghats. Many of the known Cyperaceae species are medicinal plants or used as fodder.
• Flowering and fruiting were observed from October to March.

The authors have stressed the need for more scientific studies to determine the potential uses of the new species.

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